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I realized I never made a complete statement about Fredlex, the ship name for the relationship between Frederick "Fred" Hayford (my original character) and Alex Bailey. Fred is featured in False Obsession Turned Real with a slight cameo in 7 Days (Day 4, to be exact). So yeah.

I swear to everything and everyone that Fred was not originally intended as a love interest. I started to plan for False Obsession Turned Real right after I finished TLOS 5 in the summer of 2016 (yes, it's THAT old), and decided to create a "best friend" for Conner because seriously, he needs one. But I wanted to wait until TLOS 6 was out, because I thought Chris Colfer might add something canon about Conner's school life. And I don't want to disrupt canon too much. But I read TLOS 6 and there was nothing further stated about Conner (and Alex's) school lives, so I was like, heck yeah I can finally publish my brainchild.

About Fred. I wanted one of those typical, wholesome, "dudebro" American boys, so I made him suuuper generic. A flirt? Check. Sporty? Check. Baseball cap? Check. Popular with the ladies? Check. Says "dude" often? Check.

It was at this point when I realized if Fred was Conner's childhood best friend, he would be Alex's too. And therefore Alex and Fred would be the closest to Conner and they would definitely work together to find out what was causing Conner to act weird (it was because of his crush on Bree).

When I was writing Chapter 2, which contained a lot of Fred-Alex interaction, I found that writing them was rather easy. Their dialogue flowed naturally and I began to sense the possible chemistry between them. It was unexpected, and I was lowkey afraid of potential raging Arlex shippers. Which was why I put an author's note saying Alex would not be shipped with an OC (lmao).

It was after that when Fredlex suddenly blew up on fanfiction.net.

It continued, with people shrieking "I love Fredlex, make it happen please!" and "I'm starting to ship Fredlex more than Arlex" in my inbox.

I was pretty amused with the comments (as I know what's going to happen :P) but also lowkey fearing this accidentally hellhole of a ship I had created. Before I knew it, I myself was also sucked into Fredlex shipping despite all my rules of "don't disrupt canon!!1!1!" and "respect Arlex!!". But damn, rules are rules. I don't want too much of an AU when FOTR is supposed to fill in the gaps between the books.

And then I started posting FOTR on Wattpad. You all know what happens next.

"FREDLEX FOR THE WIN!!" "lmao arthur has left the building" "im converting to Fredlex" "arthur WHO??" and so on it goes.

As much as I want Fredlex, I know I can't make them canon in FOTR. Due to great demand, I think an AU for them is acceptable :D. In the meantime, I would love to hear your Fredlex thoughts and ideas!!

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