Okay, me again 🤭 seems like Little Women is preoccupying my thoughts tonight, and I don't remember if I've seen you talk about this, but I'm really curious: thoughts on Jo and Bhaer ? I really liked him in the book (which i read before seeing the movie) but not as a romantic interest for Jo, bc he's so much older than her. Then the movie made him younger and I feel like the actors had so much chemistry, I was genuinely rooting for them! And while they do end up together in the end, I read this article talking about how this did not happen "irl" but what Jo put in her book bc the editor wanted the main female character married off. This was also supported by the colors of the scenes, how the present day scenes are all duller/cold colors vs flashbacks/scenes of the book Jo writes being so sunny; the epilogue scene (where Jo and Friedrich are married) is drenched in sunlight, and the scene of her chasing him to the train station is also very warm-colored. So thoughts on this whole thing? It's all the more interesting for me to hear them bc I'm obviously looking at this from a very romance pov (can't help it lol) but platonic, friendship love is the lense you look through most of the time (or so I've noticed).

There are two witches within me. One loves Jo and Fritz and doesn't care about the nature of their relationship as long as they're having fun being their lovely nerdy selves, the other one is perfectly aware that I, as someone who strongly identifies with Josephine Jo March, would only agree to marriage if it resembled the one Jo and Fritz have in the books. (Would still elope though, let's not get too ahead of ourselves, was talking to a childhood friend a few weeks back and my sister joked about me possibly having already eloped with someone and my childhood friend said: Jo. That would be very you. I rolled my eyes and started to talk about how incompetent the writers of my bio textbook are, but who am I to argue, I'm just the person in question here.) I strongly recommend reading Little Men and Jo's Boys because, to be frank, those works forced me to accept the grip this fictional relationship has on my rotten, evil, spinster-wanna-be heart. The rest is under the cut because it all got concerningly long. How shocking :O

It's complicated! But it always is with me and my romantic otps because I always identify with the people involved in those ships that I almost ship them in spite of myself. It's easier if I identify with both parties and if I identify with them in a way that doesn't make me completely insane (aka I don't identify with them entirely), but offers me a certain amount of comfort probably because I've already come to terms with the thing about them that I relate to. (this is how I feel about sparkly GG's Dan and Blair) BUT with Jo and Fritz or with Ten and Rose I just go :| because they involve characters who find the idea of settling down repelling and uncharacteristic to their understanding of themselves, like in total contradiction of who they are or have always been and then there's this person and it's just... well this. I think what makes it even more unsettling for me is how this isn't exactly a conscious decision, it's just that Jo and Fritz love spending time together. They simply enjoy being around each other and geeking out and talking literature and art and politics and philosophy and Jo feels so seen and understood in an intellectual sense for the first time ever and that's so big and so important to her. And I think that's what will always be true about their dynamic no matter how you view it. (and I beg to argue that lw 2019 offers enough room for any interpretation)

(Mainly talking about book Jo x Bhaer in the following paragraphs because I don't ship them in the 2019 movie and my interpretation overlaps with the one you presented in your ask, boy do I love having multiple versions of the same story in my head.)

Idk they just kinda slip into sharing their personal worlds with one another, there's not really a big realisation about the nature of their bond while they are together, the italicized oh moment is a result of overthinking the interactions after they have already occurred. While they're together it's just fun and pleasent and Jo doesn't have the time to go through potential meaning of it all while it's happening which is quite telling because, with Jo being a storyteller, she observes every moment from that lens, but with Fritz reality is somehow enough? YOUR HEART UNDERSTOOD MINE?!?!??!?! That's from the book, that's the essence of Jo and Fritz. You can't exactly stay immune to that. Like Fritz is the most Jo-ish love interest Jo could have gotten. He's bookish and an outcast and raggedy (affectionate) and so deeply kind. In the words of Penn Badgley (I love using his name as one of a great philosopher, @/tumblr girlies jochase has A Type) it's this completely heady thing where Jo falls for this person because he's her imperfectly perfect intellectual match and he gets her and he listens and she ends up loving him romantically because of all that. It's a progression! This is Jo March, of course it's a story in chapters, right? Everything is a story with Jo. And Fritz is kind of her indicator that real life can be just as literary, but maybe not in the way that she expected it to be? LMA really said if I have to marry my girl off she's getting the most unconventional marriage there is or she's dying, like that's it. All in all, it's such a cool dynamic regardless of the label you decide to put on it, but I think in the book you can't read it as anything other than romantic because it kinda takes away from the power of what LMA did with them, you know? Also like. I love how, in the book, Fritz isn't portrayed as conventionally attractive, but it's quite clear that he is attractive to Jo, which is also a brilliant move on Alcott's part. Also peace.mp3.