Isaiah the Ox wrote:
AHA. I found the thread! I have questions for the Trandy fandom (aka Tiger) and don't want it just in some q&a. =p
-is happily crowned queen and dictator-for-life of the trandy fandom-
Isaiah the Ox wrote:
SO. Did Trent help Mandy during her parents divorce? Or was he oblivious like he was in Mum's the Word? Did Mandy text him while in the hospital?
I'd guess he was probably there for her as he could have been.
At the end of "Mum's the Word", Trent asks Mandy if the fact that she only liked him as a friend was the big important thing she was going to talk to him about in the cafeteria at the beginning of the episode, and she replies that she was actually going to tell him something about her parents. I did write a speculative fic on her following through with that, although that's not canon, obviously. But Mandy explicitly tells Trent that she trusts him, and knowing her character, I don't think that would change due to the events of the episode. He still misled her about the valentine thing, but he didn't do it on purpose, and I think she could put two and two together and figure out that he only did it to protect Max's secret.
I think it's also important to note that Max had flipped the switch to put them back on the air by the time Mandy said she was going to tell Trent "something about [her] parents", which means that the whole audience of Candid Conversations heard that something was up. She may also have decided to tell Trent the whole truth so that she could reveal it to someone she cared about on her own terms, before everyone else started speculating.
As a result, I think we could expect people to stop asking for Richard Maxwell to return before we should expect that Trent wouldn't be there for her. That's just who Trent is—he's compassionate and kind, and he helps people who are in need. Whether or not she let him know about the broken leg, of course, I don't know, but it doesn't sound like she was even in the hospital for very long before she was taken home, so I suspect that anyone who wasn't either Connie or a Straussberg, including people like Liz and Trent, found out about it after she'd gone home. (I headcanon that Trent found out when he went to church that Sunday morning—"Life, in the Third Person" starts on a Saturday—and saw the Straussbergs there minus Mandy and asked about her, and then promptly had an aneurysm and broke down her door to mother-hen her to the end of time. Definitely haven't written a fic about it, though. No sir-ree.)
However he found out, though, I imagine he was as supportive and helpful as he could have been, helping her get around school, carrying her stuff, bringing her homework assignments when she was still in bed, that kind of thing. That's probably about the time when everybody
really started shipping them, although most people were all aboard the USS
Trandy after the KYDS Radio incident.
Isaiah the Ox wrote:
When did Mandy realize she liked Trent? It seems he liked her in the aforementioned episode, but she kinda cut him down fast. When did she realize the love? Did she like him in A Class Reenactment? =0
I don't think Mandy was really in an emotional state to like any guys at the time, to be honest. Her priorities just didn't lie there at that point. I do think we should take her behavior in "A Class Reenactment" at face value, though; I really do think she only saw him as a friend at that point. It's not really out of character for Mandy to get frustrated with and lash out at people who keep trying to pigeonhole or bully her, so while we can't rule out that she had feelings for him that she was in denial about, I think it's more likely that she really didn't see him as more than a friend and just wanted everyone to leave her alone about it.
I would at least hope that Mandy started falling in love with Trent in high school, though, mostly because any longer than that just seems like a really long time to drag out a crush.
My guess is that it starts in freshman year and they start dating their sophomore year. Mostly because both of them are pretty in tune with their emotions, especially in how they feel about each other, so they'll understand
how they feel pretty quickly, but they're also complete morons with self-esteem issues, so they won't want to
address it with each other immediately, and will probably dance around it for awhile (Mandy in particular having moments of self-flagellation because of how she treated Trent when she denied that she had feelings for him). Such circumstances will be rife for entertainment for almost all involved, and mass betting pools will emerge.
Basically, if Lucy and Curt are the couple that makes for good drama but probably not a good long-term relationship, Trent and Mandy are the couple that starts dating in high school and winds up having Instagram hashtags for pictures of their kids.
Everything we know and love about the show could vanish! 
) Trandy. Must. Happen. Sorry, no questions about it. 
