NEEEEED A Scene Of Jean Kissing Jeremy Against The Bike. Like They Go On A Little Scenic Ride And Stop

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.

every time someone draws fem Andrew and Neil an angel gains its wings and then gets given a thank you letter from god personally to pass on to the creators for doing gods work for them 🙏🏻

it would be stumbling fr but it would be so cute and they would figure it out together with so much sass and exy and care

i need fics of this right now

every time i reread aftg (the original trilogy) i forget how sassy wymack is and its literally amazing

here are some examples from tfc:

first line and he’s opening with sass at a 10/10

i. love. him.

great one liner but the whole thing is hilarious

the way he just speaks over seth is everything lmaooooo

“watch me beam with pride” im. dyinggggg

kicking kevin? 💀 the colon??? iconic

the forming relationship between him and neil actually means the world to me

yes yes yes exactly!! literally makes me giggle to think about. like imagine you play an exy game, drink copious amounts of vodka afterwards, and then your roommates do. not. let. you. sleep. all so that they can drag you and most the team to an annoying ass interview (your first in nine months) and you wake up after the bus ride there to your dad kicking you and telling you he doesn’t care about your complaints

he must’ve been a bit hungover and so tired and here’s wymack, sending him on laps up and down the bus so he can’t fall back asleep. i love them, wymack would’ve been like this all the time if he was raising kevin

every time i reread aftg (the original trilogy) i forget how sassy wymack is and its literally amazing

here are some examples from tfc:

first line and he’s opening with sass at a 10/10

i. love. him.

great one liner but the whole thing is hilarious

the way he just speaks over seth is everything lmaooooo

“watch me beam with pride” im. dyinggggg

kicking kevin? 💀 the colon??? iconic

the forming relationship between him and neil actually means the world to me

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?

goddddddd it absolutely was a tiny rebellion and it makes me insane to think about because we know just how much he locked everything away mentally to survive riko and the nest and for him to care this much about something that he is willing to stick his neck out to get it is everything. something about history spoke to him in a way that he wasn’t willing to lose and i need to know what it was

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.

i love fucking with men while i’m out and drunk. like the fuck you doing trying to pick me up? i will wave them off and if they persist, i will stare them down until they fuck off. and if they don’t fuck off, i would punch them. it hasn’t gotten to that point but like if you can’t read my face when im glaring af you, that’s on you.

and today, we went to a bodega afterwards and i was asking men what sport they played and making fun of all their answers, it was so funny 10/10 recommend

missing my babygirl dr. melissa king right about now. should i watch the pitt a third time, yes or yes

Three and four

on my knees praying, begging, that kevin is an observant narrator. please kevin you’re so judgmental, give us so many details 😭 i need to have more than scraps in the sequel, i need your thoughts and comments on everything