Oh Butch Transmasc Andrew Minyard… Oh Save Me. Oh He Has Glasses And Piercings (especially An Anti-eyebrow)

do you think he loved history so much because he looked at the ravens and saw the nest as another civilization so sure that they would never be defeated and took comfort in knowing how even the strongest civilizations, like rome, eventually fell? do you think he took to this pattern with so much fervor because he was desperately wishing for the nest to crumble, hoping that if they were destroyed he could finally escape riko? do you think he hoped for an aftermath that allowed him to rebuild his life without all the abuse, a future where he got to keep his exy but didn’t have to be viciously punished for success and failure alike?

and do you think that he watched the nest fall and the ravens spin into destruction and thought with quiet pleasure how he was right, how history was right, and all civilizations eventually meet their end? and do you think that right on its heels came fear over how the ravens would rebuild?

hey so like Kevin Day history nerd that came to love history so much because he kept learning and reading about people and civilizations that where continuously torn down but rebuilt time and time again, how things were destroyed and created anew, how people, despite everything, prevail and claw their way back.

sorry to say but i desperately need an over 100,000 word slow burn of abbot and robby falling in love with them being idiots, them struggling to deal with their trauma, robby navigating his relationship with his religion, abbot having chronic pain, tragic backstory, nonlinear healing, etc etc etc

they are so so fractured and broken and i need them to be in love and messily figuring out how to heal with each other

do you think we will get the scene where riko breaks his hand? do you think we’ll get what goes through his head when the master pits them against each other and in the aftermath? do you think we will get him begging jean and escaping? do you think we will get him showing up on wymack’s door and all the complicated feelings of knowing that’s his father? do you think we’ll get a snippet of the monster’s freshman year through his eyes? do you think we will get conversations with betsy? do you think we will have gotten kevin discovering andrew and the meeting where he turned the ravens down? do you think we’ll get jean’s arrival through his eyes? do you think we will get him convincing himself to be straight?

him not being able to fight is literally a whole subplot in my opinion. early on in tfc he actually says how he is an instigator through and through and can only start fights, not finish them, assumedly because of his smart mouth

“Neil was much better at instigating fights than winning them, but it'd be worth losing if he could just put a fist through Kevin's face once. Starting a fight was too out of character for who he portrayed "Neil" to be, though.” - tfc, chapter five

he realizes that he cannot fight, that he could throw a punch or two but would get his ass beat cause that’s not his strong suit. with weapons it could be a different story but like OP said, his training was when he was very young and mary took him before he moved on to cutting up the human body (it actually wasn’t EC, it’s in tkm which is cool)

“He didn't say he'd used knives before; one couldn't grow up a Wesninski without having a blade pushed into his hand. Nathan didn't have the time or patience to teach his son but he'd put two of his people to the task. Luckily Neil left home before he progressed past cutting up hunks of dead animals.” - tkm, chapter three

we can guess that on the run, he had to put his limited fighting skills into action to survive and that he might be a bit better if he had a gun or a knife but he is not close to renee’s level and that’s okay. he doesn’t want to be. he even admits that he doesn’t want to learn how to fight with knives because it reminds him too much of his father.

"So those knives [Andrew] brings everywhere are yours?" "Were mine," Renee said. "He was right; I don't need them anymore. If you need them, he will give them to you, and I will teach you how to use them." She wasn't smiling anymore. Neil studied her calm expression and knew she meant it. She'd put her faith in mankind and her Christian piety on hold and show him how to cut a man open throat to groin if he asked her to. […] "Thank you," Neil said, "but no. I don't want to be like—him." - tkm, chapter three

and him not being good with his fists is important because he feels a bit helpless after drake happens and goes to matt to ask him for help. because matt knows how to fight because of his mother and neil is aware of that, aware of his shortcomings, and asks for lessons

“That night he asked Matt to teach him how to fight. Matt looked surprised by the request but agreed, and they spent the rest of the evening figuring out when they could possibly meet up for lessons. […] Matt promised to get Neil a pair of gloves the next time he went out.” -trk, chapter fourteen

neil not being able to fight is important because it goes hand in hand with him being a runner. he knows how to start fights and how to run away from them. we can even assume he knows how to fight just enough to find an opening to run. but throughout the trilogy he is learning how to stand his ground and not run at the first hint of danger. learning to lean on others and how to fight is part of that journey meaning he has to be bad at it at first. and i don’t believe he ever gets great at it. because he doesn’t want to pick up a knife and while he learns how to fight from matt (which is phenomenal, i love their friendship so much) part of point of the books is neil healing and not needing to fight anymore. after riko dies and after baltimore, neil has less reason to know how to fight than before and i think he doesn’t put his full effort in mastering it. i believe that he learns how to stand his own in a fight because he wants to have the safety that comes with it but knows that he has andrew to lean on now should he need him

i keep seeing people say neil is canonically better at fighting than andrew??? genuinely confused as to where this is coming from outside of fanon...like genuinely why do people think he can beat andrew or even renee in a fight? neil is not physically intimidating like andrew. he is not capable of the same physical violence (maybe if u give him a gun). and yeah i see people point to his upbringing with nathan and MAYBE im cheating bcus im pretty sure this was only mentioned in the EC but his training never moved past dead animals. mary literally took him and ran before they could move to training him on live ones, and i think that's evidence that he wouldn't be some insanely crazy good knife fighter (also the fact all of this occured before he turned 10).

and call me crazy but there's No Evidence that Mary taught him Any physical fighting while they were on the run during those 8 years. in fact i think there's more subtextual evidence for her refusing to teach him both so that 1) he'd remain dependent on her and 2) so there was no chance he could become like nathan. like did we forget that his whole thing is getting his ass beat. over n over again. this is, i would argue, one of his most character defining traits. the foxes' battered wife in the wise words of one david wymack. mr "i start fights and let andrew finish them" josten.

aftg floor plans

not that anyone asked but the way my brain works means that any time i read anything, i am piecing together every room, every house, and every space. i need to create an image in my head so i can see the characters in it and see how they interact with the space. except it’s always vague and sometimes a throw-away line places a window or a wall where i didn’t think it was and i have to redo the entire space in my head…… it’s a struggle but after so many times rereading aftg, i have a pretty solid idea

this is just a long way of saying i have decided to take what’s in my head and make it into reality and i have made floor plans for aftg lol

so far, i have done the foxes’ dorm (both how i think the entire floor is laid out and each of their three rooms), wymack’s apartment, and abby’s house. i plan on doing the cali places later, don’t even worry

of course tumblr is corrupting the quality but in my head there are five rooms to each side of the hall and the stairs are right next to the monsters' room. that stray white box is an elevator supposedly.... i had no idea how or where the elevator should be so i just kinda threw it there, don't laugh. and we know the soccer kids live on their floor so they have the rooms across the hall

i placed everything based on descriptions gathered from the first four books (thank you jean for telling us they do in fact have stoves even if they are just two burners). i gave kevin's desk an extra monitor to watch games on lol and andrew has to be by a window to smoke out of it. also, the beds are bunked. i know this looks big but it was hard to get the spacing right..........

for the girls, i mirrored the monsters' room because i know that piping tends to make apartments laid out so kitchens or bathrooms are back to back with your neighbors. they also get a fancy extra chair and a bigger tv bc allison is rich and you can't tell me their room wouldn't have the nicest furniture. i feel like dan would have the bottom bunk, renee the top, and allison the lone lofted bed but that's just me lol

we know matt and neil shoved their three desks by the windows and in my head, matt and neil's bunk is on the left while seth's lofted bed is on the right. and matt and neil have their dressers underneath seth's bed and his is by the window

this was actually interesting because we know that the front door is out of sight from the doorway of the study and that there are windows in the living room so i put in this turn to the hall. again, the space looks huge here but that's mainly because i didn't want to have to shrink and rearrange all the walls over and over again

abby's was the hardest by far. i went back and scoured the books for more information about her house because i was struggling and have struggled with it since my first read through. we know that there is a doorway to the kitchen (so i couldn't give her the open floor plan i wanted) and that the bedroom jean stayed in was just down the hall from the bathroom. i ended up giving abby her own master bath just because i felt like it but i have no idea if that is canon. and the hall bath seemed too large so i put in a laundry room randomly but whatever. we also know she has a two car driveway so i made the shape of the house a little funky. and in my head, during summer break aaron and nicky stay in one bedroom and andrew and kevin are in the other one. i put kandrew in the bedroom down the hall because it is farther from the front door and andrew would like that imo. that is also the bedroom jean is in after renee takes him from evermore. and of course she needed a huge dining room table to fit everyone

ANYWAY, if you made it this far i am surprised and thank you for entertaining this. i can also share all the passages i used to piece together these floor plans cause they are all bookmarked but that felt like too much to include here and i doubt anyone cares. feel free to debate wall placements in the comments, i would love to talk to you about it as you can probably tell

and if literally anyone is interested, i can and will make these in the sims and then they will be real cute and colorful floor plans. i will probably do it anyway for my own enjoyment but whether i post them is up in the air

pt. 2 pt. 3 (cali)

a smoke break

jean is very prone to burning in the sun. he needs to be religious with sunscreen and even with it will not really tan, just get red. no matter how much he is outside, he never gets more than a few shades tanner

jeremy burns easily but also gets nice tans. he tries to be good about sunscreen but sometimes forgets and is often a little burnt on his nose. but he tans perfectly and it’s as if it doesn’t fade in the winter (it drives jean insane). however since he is outside all the time and tans so easily, he has so many funky tan lines

cat and laila do not burn. they are both religious with sunscreen for skin cancer reasons and less so they won’t crisp. laila can get burned if she spends all day under the sun and has no sunscreen but like barely and only in extreme circumstances. cat though will. not. burn. even on the rare occasion she forgets sunscreen (which is next to never) she doesn’t burn, she just gets tanner. and she gets tans with sunscreen on too while sunscreen makes jean tan less lol

neil's learned obliviousness

gearing myself up to write another essay about neil josten. the grind never stops. had to figure out why people making neil super clueless and oblivious always rubbed me the wrong way even tho it's technically canon so here it is.

ok so i have a lot of thoughts about neil and obliviousness but i'm gonna mostly condense them into this single thesis statement: neil only pays attention to and notices things he deems important.

we've been knew atp that neil has insane tunnel vision, and that often comes across in his narration. because of this, it's easy to assume that neil is just genuinely very clueless and oblivious when it comes to social interaction and also romantic relationships, flirting, etc.

i know nora herself said that neil wouldn't realise if someone is flirting with him because he's dense as a brick and while i appreciate the comedic value of socially oblivious neil i generally take this characterisation with a grain of salt because it very quickly leans into territory of neil being just generally dumb and inept, which i lowk can't stand because it sanitises and declaws neil a lot and makes him boring and stereotypical.

so i raise you this: neil's obliviousness (if you want to call it that) throughout aftg and in his narration is deliberate. mostly, i think it's all intentional. he literally intentionally refuses to notice or give attention to certain things. and because of his relentless focus on only a couple of things (exy and his survival), things like socialising and relationships get put on the backburner unless they relate to the two aforementioned things.

let's dissect it using examples.

nicky's flirting. neil's narration is pretty clear-cut when it comes to this. he doesn't demonstrate much confusion towards nicky's behaviour except that he doesn't really know why nicky's more interested in him than exy. crucially, he isn't confused about why nicky demonstrates an interest in him (which is because he thinks neil is hot), he's just confused about why nicky is investing energy into flirting with him when, in his mind, there are better things to be doing. it seems, at least in his narration, that he knows nicky is flirting, he just doesn't know why and also doesn't really care to focus on it. aside from an initial discomfort/expression of disinterest, neil doesn't linger on nicky's comments and flirtations for the rest of the series. he narrates it when it's relevant but doesn't make any additional internal comments towards it because it doesn't pertain to his two priorities: exy and survival.

marissa's flirting. i feel like there's two ways to interpret neil's response to marissa's advance "i can give you my number". neil says "what for?" and you can either take this as genuine confusion or just neil kinda being a dick. i lowk never considered the first option and just jumped straight to "neil doesn't really care about hurting this girl's feelings" lmfao. i think i'm right tho, because he elaborates and makes it clear he isn't interested in pursuing relationships outside of the foxes (see: priority no. 1, exy) and when nicky and dan comment on it, making it explicitly clear that marissa was asking neil out, neil doesn't express any confusion over what she was trying to do. people who write neil being genuinely exaggeratedly clueless when being flirted with need to remember that neil wasn't unaware of marissa's intentions during this scene, he was just so aggressively disinterested that he failed to remark on most of it. he never expresses any actual confusion or obliviousness about her flirting.

andrew. ok look. this is gonna require some explaining. first of all let's talk about andrew's attraction to neil on a purely physical level. their nothingship era, if you will. neil's dizzying whiplash during the "that doesn't mean i wouldn't blow you" scene is honestly pretty understandable. like really, who wasn't surprised during that scene? the hints in the previous books about andrew's attraction towards neil were so subtle that most of us readers had to reread a couple times to actually catch the progression and build-up. and also, andrew was high and manic for most of the first two books, so it's understandable that neil probably chalked up a lot of andrew's yapping and odd behaviours to the drugs, rather than a genuine expression of andrew's feelings. that's not to say he discounted the things andrew told him, but since he's always taken andrew at face value, he also didn't doubt andrew's "i hate you" and supposed dislike of him. i think it's actually very very understandable that neil didn't pick up on andrew's attraction to him because 1. why would you ever assume that about anyone anyway 2. neil is pretty preoccupied with being hunted down by his serial killer father and the japanese mafia 3. andrew was NOT making it easy on neil at all. this is partially because andrew himself wasn't ready to face the reality of his feelings for neil and also just his general confusing way of going about things. it makes a lot of sense that even neil, who's generally good at reading andrew and picking up on his hints, would miss whatever hints andrew was dropping about this, if any. and finally, 4. andrew wanting to fuck neil doesn't have anything to do with exy or survival, so neil instinctively filters it out and doesn't think about it a lot. next, i guess we have to talk about andrew's actual feelings for neil. again, we like to make fun of neil for never picking up on the fact that andrew is in LOVE with him during their situationship phase. but again, i think it makes a lot of sense? yes, andrew wasn't exactly subtle about it by a certain point (see: baltimore reunion) but also, neil has literally been pavloved to reject romantic relationships. one of the ways he "justifies" his nothingship with andrew is by assuring himself that andrew is only physically attracted to him. and the other justification is that he sees andrew as intertwined with the idea of his survival, because of the deal they have. keeping andrew close and being in a relationship with him is directly related to his own safety and survival. because neil's lowk manipulated his own thinking to associate andrew implicitly with survival, suddenly their relationship is a lot more prioritised in neil's mind and narration, because it pertains to priority no. 2, survival. i truly, truly believe neil's refusal or inability to see andrew's actual feelings for him is deliberate. he doesn't want to notice that andrew actually is in love with him because that is area he isn't familiar with and he doesn't want to hurt andrew when he dies. but because he obviously does want to continue this little "nothing" with andrew, and because he associates andrew with survival, he's unwilling to let go of him. so he just refuses to notice and remains deliberately oblivious to andrew's feelings for him. it's all very psychological.

final argument: people like to make fun of neil for not realising his own feelings for andrew but listen. he does realise. he never says that he doesn't feel anything for andrew. he never denies being in love with or attracted to andrew, not even in his own head. he registers, literally in trk, after his conversation with nicky, that he sees andrew differently and could be developing feelings for him, but he literally forcibly pushes the thoughts away because they would distract him from priority no. 1 (exy) and priority no. 2 (survival). he also notices in the back half of tkm that their nothingship has taken on new weight and means more than just "nothing" but he avoids acknowledging it with andrew even when he's aware of it in his own mind. so yeah. neil isn't in a state of denial. like at all.

also, neil does notice things when they pertain to his priorities. like, he picked up on jeanee the same way kevin did. he noticed literally in trk the way jean reacted differently to renee, but he only chose to acknowledge and mention it out loud when he could use it to his advantage. and it did work out in everyone's favour, because he brought it up with kevin, kevin gave renee jean's number, and that's how jean was able to escape the nest and survive the year. so, lbr, neil isn't as clueless and out-of-it as the fandom likes to make him. he can be very perceptive and socially aware when it pertains to his narrow-minded priorities.

ok at the end of the day, i can acknowledge: it is not that deep. if ppl want to make neil super oblivious and clueless and socially inept, it's not rlly a big deal. i just personally hate when they dumb neil down when he is honestly such a smart and perceptive character and his intelligence is actually such a huge part of the series. so anyway. i hope u enjoyed this essay, it's been a while so it's a little rough.

really need bishop or sheldon or who tf ever to swing by during lunch one day and be all handsy with jeremy because I need to see the vein that pops out of jean’s neck and the way his gray eyes turn to hard slate and his hands twitch with lethal intent and how cat or cody or whichever poor unfortunate soul has to somehow stop this 6’2” angry frenchman from committing murder in broad daylight, mhmm

Thinking about Wymack putting up with Neil, alone, during his senior year. None of the other foxes are there to deal with his antics. Kevin isn’t there to talk about everything Exy related. Andrew isn’t there to keep him grounded and sane. Allison and Nicky aren’t pushing him out of his comfort zone with his style, appearance, etc. Matt isn’t there to be a friend. Dan can’t help him captain his team. Aaron isn’t there to annoy him. Renee isn’t there with her gentle, reassuring smile.

I know that some of the freshman from the EC become Neil’s friends, but it isn’t the same as the OG Foxes.

So, he turns to one of the few people he trusts, Dad Wymack™️. Neil joins him in his office for lunch and tells him all about Andrew’s most recent Exy game. “Did you see how many saves Andrew made last night?” 38. It was beautiful.” *heart eyes* Coach returns his attention to the paperwork he was working on when Neil walked in. He half listens as the striker explains a movie that Nicky said he needed to watch to understand current trends.

After a game night, Neil goes home with Wymack, who now lives together with Abby, and stays for dinner with the couple, yapping about everything that plagued him that day. “I talked to Andrew last night and he was telling me about this drill his pro team does at practice. He thinks it’s stupid, of course, but I think it could help us get through the other team’s defense easier.” He goes on to explain the drill between bites of pasta and sauce.

When Neil leaves, Coach looks at Abby, feeling slightly dumbfounded, “I never knew the kid could say so many words in such a short time.” Abby lets out a chuckle.

“I don’t get any paperwork finished anymore with him around so much.” He explains with fake annoyance. She gives him a soft smile, “He just misses Andrew and the rest of our Foxes. I think it’s says a lot that he trusts you with the details of his private life. We all know how hard that is for him.”

Dad Wymack sits in his thought for a quiet minute, thinking back to the locker room in Millport with the brown-haired, brown-eyed boy who was scared to live. To the airport before the new year with the red-haired, blue-eyed boy who was fighting for his family. To a cheap motel in Baltimore with a boy covered in scars who fought to stay and live. Neil has come a long way and Wymack’s chest swells with pride and love for the striker.

Two days later, on Monday, Neil shows up right on time for Wymack’s lunch hour, but the older man doesn’t mind the sound of Neil’s chattering over their shared lunch. “Allison told me my hair is getting too long, but the shampoo she sent me is making my curls look “delicious”. I don’t know what she means by that, how hair can look edible, but Andrew says not to worry about it. Speaking of Andrew, do you know how much he has been bench pressing in the gym? He’s up to—“

Wymack lets out a quiet, exasperated sigh as he leans back in his chair, accepting his fate for the next year as Neil continues talking. He may act annoyed about his new lunch time guest, but it means a lot that Neil feels safe with him, even if that means learning about pop culture and Neil’s distaste for broccoli.