I'd love to hear more about Evie and Emma and Evie and Jade!
Ask list here!
Details below! <3 <3 <3 Beware for possible incoherent rambling. These are meant to be braindumps after all lol
Evie and Emma
Evie and Emma are definitely the friends that inspire each other and lift each other up. They consider each other very important to one another. Emma was there to help Evie out on the first day at Berry and encouraging her to meet people at lunch, Evie was there to help Emma out like when bringing the party and letting her stay at her place and encouraging her to join an activity with her.
It especially means a lot to Evie that Emma, a very shy and socially awkward girl, had no problem extending kindness to her on the first day. Since Evie is like that too, she'd probably see that as like "well if Emma can do that for me, I can do it for her and the other people I meet here too"
I think also a motivator with Emma is how Evie had behaved to her deceased middle school friend. Even though she and Emma don't fully align in tastes or opinions or whatnot, Evie still has that whole incident in the back of her mind and she's just like "I'm never making that mistake again"
Something I kinda wish we got a (premium scene) of, but we didn't (though I can kinda get why we didn't, it just Would've Been Cool) and so I'm gonna write a fic about it, but after the basketball game in Book 2 when MC and Emma go to the golden griddle to catch up. I haven't fully thought it out but Evie would get a chance to vent to her about the game and feeling like Band and Cheer are rooting against the wrong enemy.
I also have this idea, it's mentioned early on in canon that Emma likes YA romance novels. Evie obviously would have disdain for them because of how a lot of them seem to have very gender normative romance roles and that makes her feel alienated. She was that 8th grader who mocked the absolute hell out of books like Twilight for this reason lol. But going into high school, she would start to realize there were lots of girls (including Emma ofc) who actually liked those books, and while she didn't fully get why, she would tend to be more quiet about it because she didn't want to make Emma feel bad about it. I go more in-depth on it here kinda.
But sooner or later at some point, Evie would commiserate about this to Emma, and in a manner that's respectful of Emma's tastes. Just explaning that she feels like she feels like people like her with her romance preferences are alienated by a lot of the romance genre. And the scenario I had in mind is maybe Emma going through her collection of personal favorites and picking out those few favorites that she thinks might appeal more to Evie's tastes. Cue Evie tearing the fuck up and hugging Emma.
Evie and Jade
These two would definitely be the kinds of friends to just hi-five every time they agree on something, and seeing how heavily they both love to stray from typical femininity they're definitely hi-fiving a lot haha. Especially when Jade says "you wouldn't catch me dead in that tiny cheer skirt". Honestly I think Evie could be good at cheer and might enjoy it, as long as they let her wear pants lol.
During the whole tryouts debacle in Book 3, Evie overall was very consistently nice to Jade. As frustrating as it was to have to do those tryouts again, it was still clear that Jade was a cool person and definitely someone she'd want to be friends with.
In the premium scene about the truth or dare game at Four Corners in Book 3, when Jade asks Evie truth or dare, Evie chooses truth. So she gets the question "would you rather fight me or hug that crazy principal that tried to take over Berry", Evie chooses the former. She would never give Isa a hug, and she's fairly confident that she can take Jade on in a fight. At some point, these two definitely have a friendly fight, and I feel like that becomes a common thing.
Oh it's also mentioned in HSS:CA that Jade does cross country, which Evie is also experienced at, as she loves running. These two probably race each other a lot for fun haha.
Also I think about this conversation with Caleb a lot and I definitely think she brings it up to Evie too at some point. The more I think about it there are actually a lot of ways that Evie and Jade contrast, one of them being that Evie mainly had girls for friends (while Jade mainly befriended boys). Jade also preferring glitter-free frill-free simple dresses, Evie doesn't mind a bit of a cutesy touch to outfits but definitely agrees that there should be more simple non-fancified feminine formalwear.
But more on the whole thing with playing with girls vs guys. Very very incoherent ramble up ahead. Evie did sometimes enjoy playing "girly" games like pretending to be fairies. She rarely felt insecure about either her "boyish" tastes or her "girly" tastes, but of course as she grew older she picked up more on how the world made femininity seem like an obligation, or a necessity, or like she "owed" it, or like it was intrinsic to womanhood. So that did start to make her resent a lot of feminine things and make feel more averse to befriending a lot of other girls. While she didn't get why some teenage girls liked revealing clothing or romance novels, she didn't inherently think lesser of more feminine women.
I definitely feel like that might have been a similar motivation for Jade. Jade again was a "one of the boys" tomboys who had distaste for certain feminine things, but she never at any point in canon seemed to considered femininity or feminine girls "lesser". I think Evie would realize from Jade that maybe she too was nervous about not being perceived as a "real girl" and that might have contributed to some of her social aversions. Can't hang out with the boys cause they might think she's just forcing herself into a "boys' space", can't hang out with the girls cause think something is wrong with her as a girl.
They would both commiserate over the whole "NLOG" debates and the notions that teenage and adult women who take on more masculine behaviors just have internalized misogyny, and are only rejecting femininity because it's seen as "lesser". And yeah it is seen as "lesser" often, but it's also still pushed as the expectation/standard for women and to them, sometimes it feels like no one ever takes that into consideration for why so many women reject it.
Something else I feel like Jade would have picked up earlier on while Evie wouldn't realize until adulthood, how tomboyishness and gendernonconformity in girls can be seen as cute and praised as challenging stereotypes when they're young, but once they're teenagers it's seen as "unnatural" or "insecurity" or "internalized misogyny" or whatnot.
