No one makes us do anything

STOP WRITING EVERY SINGLE HARD OF HEARING CHARACTER HAVING HEARING AIDS.

First of all, HoH people are human beings. Sometimes the way things are amplified with hearing aids doesn’t sit well with us. Sometimes we don’t want them. Sometimes we try them but trying to understand and associate sounds is too damn difficult because, wow, the world is actually made of a lot of sounds, who would have thought? I once had a fucking crisis because I kept hearing a strange noise and it turned out it was the dishwasher two rooms over.

Give me HoH characters who don’t use hearing aids.

Give me HoH characters who tried using hearing aids but gave them up when they made them too uncomfortable.

Give me HoH characters who prefer the silence to the costant chaos and sounds everywhere. It might be a squick to you but it’s something that happens. You might think ‘But it’s like I’m writing them like they profit from their disability’ and yeah, you should handle this carefully but it’s not impossible. It’s not a fault in representation to write this. I can tell you myself because I do prefer the silence and I ditched my hearing aids years ago.

Give me HoH characters who don’t know shit about reading lips but are good at sign language or know how to read lips but not sign language. Fuck, give me HoH characters who don’t know how to do either and get by with a fucking chalkboard attached to their neck. Know a funny stoery? I don’t know either and I’m perfectly comfortable, I meet people and tell them how we can communicate and there’s rarely a problem even tho I’m 100% deaf.

Give me HoH characters who aren’t defined from the fact of whether they can hear or not but ARE STILL IMPAIRED BY THAT FACT BECAUSE IT’S ONLY LOGICAL.

Stop telling yourself you’re giving them an opportunity to be just like everyone else by giving them hearing aids because you’re not. You’re reducing their usefulness and their capability to be liked to them being able to successfully migle among abled people. You’re saying you’re doing representation and at the same time you’re taking the easy path that cancels their disability, OUR disability, as much as possible to make things easier on your able-bodied person understanding of social structures and your able-bodied characters and I’m fucking sick of it.

I'm referring in particular to the bet about Neil's sexuality and them calling Andrew a monster/soulless.

We all know why the latter is wrong, but I never see anyone talking about the first. Like, it's not wrong to bet about someone's sexuality (even tho technically it's none of your business). What bothers me, as an ace person who actually used the phrase "I don't swing" a couple times before reading AFTG and was more or less believed, is how insistent they are in not believing Neil when he says he doesn't swing, in how they just assume that he's lying or in denial and never seem to contemplate the fact that he's serious. Maybe I'm exaggerating and taking it too seriously and personally, idk, but I really find it invalidating and it makes me feel like to them my sexuality (and Neil's) isn't possibly as real as others.

I know a lot of book adaption, especially tv shows, have to insert storyline or scenes and stuff to accomodate for more screentime than what a direct adaption would grant them, and they usuallt stretch the screentime by deforming the books into an irrecognizable shape (I'm still bitter about The Mortal Instruments, sorry), so I thought about what scenes and storylines could be addad to make things longer and more interesting and to give a viewpoint that isn't only Neil's without changing the actual story. Here's what I came up with (feel free to add stuff).

Book one

- A lot of flashbacks to Neil's backstory, obviously, possibly before the Columbia trip so we know that what he tells Andrew is only half truth

- Some flashbacks for Kevin, too? Maybe the meeting that ended with Tetsuji pitting Kevin and Riko against each other and what came after, like with Wymack's voiceover telling Neil the story

- Scenes with only the Monsters, like them planning the trip to Columbia, finding Neil knocked out, idk, maybe Kevin and Andrew going to get breakfast or discussing stuff together. Some insight in their group, you know?

- That scene when Renee offers to take Neil and Andrew says no, I'm assuming it was around this time

- The scene from the extra content with Andrew in Wymack's apartment

- Maybe some behind the scenes with the ERC and Edgar Allen, idk

- A couple scenes with Neil and the Upperclassmen, since in the book they were all mostly implied?

- The Monsters coming back from Columbia without Neil and everyone flipping their shit, Andrew trying to sneak in Neil's room and Renee stopping him, all that jazz

Book two

- Flashbacks. Lot of flashbacks for various the backstories with get in this book. Mostly Twinyards but the others, too. Maybe an episode dedicated to them?

- Lots of Riko being shady behind the scenes

- What if, toward the end, we see some scenes (just a couple) of Nathan in prison, maybe with his lawyer to bargain for parole and we don't know who he is until the end?

- At least one scene of Renee and Andrew sparring, pls

- That scene when Andrew tells Renee to tell Neil he's gay

- Matt and Neil boxing lessons

- Team bonding scenes

- Some scenes of Andrew in Easthaven? Nothing explicit, I'm thinking mostly the beginning without any of the stuff Proust does. Like, the most would be seeing Andrew being restrained and/or drugged just to imply that Stuff Is Happening and Neil's efforts are in vain

Book Three

- Riko and Nathan behind the scenes being shady villains

- Maybe something with the Moriyama empire, making use see how it works a bit and showing the fallout of Kengo's illness

- Some Jean stuff?

- More of Renee's backstory since TRK didn't tell us everything

- Andrew and Aaron doing Therapy with Betsy

- Maybe more Andreil moments (nothing intense, I'm just thinking about some pseudo normal stuff to show they can be pseudo normal together, like bantering for the sake of it and randomly kissing on the rooftop)

- Speaking of Andreil, that missing scene of Neil giving Andrew his money

It’s not as bad as Andrew’s obviously, and I think it’s maybe more due to his upbringing (how he was taught to not care about certain things) than his trauma, but there are still moments where he simply doesn’t get why people are making a big deal of things. Or in the case of Seth’s death, he understands but he still doesn’t feel anything. He feels responsable but that’s logic, not really feeling, you know? Responsable isn’t the same as sorry.

Honestly, Neil’s emotions, especially toward others, are kind of muted during the first one and a half books. I think the fall banquet is a starting point for his to start shedding his apathy, and even more so after the Drake incident.

But I wonder if it’s really gone? Like, a lot of fanfics I’ve seen that take place immediately after the canon seem to either forget about this apathy or just think it’s enterely gone, and I honestly think that maybe there are still moments where it comes back because that kind of thinking doesn’t just disappear because you foubnd a family, you know? Especially when you found that family in the midst of traumatic events.

And I was thinking of the various Roasts in the series and do you guys remember that after Neil said to the press that EA should fire Coach Moriyama Andrew decided it was a good time to give him an handjob?

Yeah, I'm not saying all those fics were Andrew gets all hot and bothered listening to Neil roast people are right, but they are totally right.

- Neil and Andrew, according to Nora, share the same bed for the whole year because Kevin and Matt graduated the previous year and Aaron and Nicky had therefore moved back to Andrew’s room, and then they offer Robin to move into their suiite and to make space for her Neil and Andrew sleep together. Which is all cute and coupley and I’m sure everyone here loves the idea (me included), but I also have a bed that is exactly as big as the ones you get in a college dorm and it is most definitely not made for two people. It’s bound to be uncomfortable. Like, either they’ll wake up every day as a tagled mess or one of them will fall off the bed in the middle of the night and wake everyone in the room

- Robin costantly finding herself in the middle of College Boys being College Boys, I pity the poor girl

- Nicky rambling about Erik all. the. time, and everyone else by now is used to it but Robin is overwhelmed, somebody save her

- My sister is studying vet in college and okay, it’s not the same exact thing as medicine but it’s similar enough that I assure you, Aaron has at least one minor meltdown every fortnight because listen,  Med Is Stressful™. Also Aaron is a short-tempered midget. Robin has probably gotten caught in one of these at least once

- Neil and Andrew being their usual selves and sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s cute and other times it’s just plain confusing. Why is Andrew making death threats every which way? Why does Neil smile like a fool every time Andrew saysa  percentage? For that matter, why is Andrew costantly saying mathemathically impossible numbers? Is it a secret code or is he just plain crazy? Who knows. Certainly not Robin

It’d be like, you know how he sort of disassociates and starts thinking about the Foxes to avoid thinking about the pain he’s feeling? Yeah, so it’d be the last scene of the episode and I’d edit the whole thing as a montage with various scenes with the Foxes, and the scenes are sometimes disrupted by glimpse of what’s happening in the car (like, really fast flashes of, say, the dashboard lighter getting close to his arms/face, blood dripping down his chin... nothing actually explicit but enough to be clear and chilling).

And I’d definitely start the montage with Andrew saying “You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying here.” and giving him a key (obviously I’m imagining a close-up of the key being pressed in Neil’s hand okay I have a very vivid imagination bear with me) because that’s ironic since now he’s going away but also to make the parallel with the hotel scene more easily noticeable, and I’d end it with Andrew saying “You don’t look like a Nathan.”, then it flashes to the car and you can hear Neil’s voiceover “I’m not. I’m Nathaniel.”. And then the screen goes black and the episode ends, and basically “I’m Nathaniel” is the last thing we hear in the episode and that’s to drive home the fact that he’s leaving Neil Josten behind and going back to being Nathaniel.

Also I’m undecided: should there be a really sad song playing during all this or should it be without any background music to make everything even more tragic and immediate and almost suffucating?

I just... Kevin Day, man.

My favourite character is actually Andrew, but KEVIN DAY. Wow, okay, I’ll try to make sense.

I want to talk about Kevin and his recovery concerning his hand because I’ve been in a situation pretty similar, although to be fair I didn’t break any bones.

When I was 12 (I’m almost 18 now), I was hit by an hemipareses (is that the right way to say it? Who know. Certainly not me, I’m not a doctor, bye) to be precise, it was ischemia, which basically means blood stopped going to the muscles in the left side of my body. So my muscles atrophied, everything went stiff and it was fucking difficult to move. The worst of it passed after a couple days, but the thing is that all my left muscles are still really stiff. Even now I’m typing with just my right hand because my left fingers are fucking useless. I can move them, but I can’t stretch them, holding things is definitely not easy with that hand and my wrist tends to go limp as a default. Also my arm and leg feel like concrete. You get the gist.

And just... do you have any idea what it’s like to just stop being able to do things the way you’ve always been used to? Like! I can’t hold a fork properly when I’m eating! My fingers cramp if I stretch them too much and go numb if I forget to move them for 5 minutes! Kevin went through that! And I’m sorry for all the exclamation points but I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that he managed to recover all the way to even besting Riko when Riko wasn’t playing with a fucking broken hand.

And you know, maybe it’s just me, but physiotherapy in these situations is so, so bad and a good way to spiral into depression (I did), because all you’re able to see is your failures and the fact that you won’t be able to do the things you love again, and Kevin pulled through even that!

Like, I’ve been playing the drums since I was 7 and I was GOOD, really good, and after my muscles atrophied I was half convinced I wouldn’t be able to do it again. My mom kept saying that I wasn’t obligated to end the years of drum lessons she’d payed for since I couldn’t flex my arms and hand the right way. My music teacher in middle school (yes, we have music as a mandatory class here in Italy) didn’t think I would be able to go on, especially because I had become deaf just a month before the hemipareses. Another teacher asked me if I was going to keep playing and didn’t seem to think I would be able to do much. And a lot more. Just like everyone said Kevin could never play again. And I told those people that, well, I didn’t think I would be half as good as before but I wanted to keep going because I loved playing the drum (and also what kind of teenager doesn’t need to smash things with a stick when they’re angry at the world?). My right hand and arm were still fully working, so why not adapt and try to find a way to compensate what I lacked now? And you know what? In a year I was back to being just as good as I was before, even if the movements with my left arm were jerky and difficult and definitely not as fluid and they should be. And a couple months ago my teacher went up to me and offered to help me find a way into a professional career if I ever wanted to because apparently I’m that good. Which I don’t want, because I play for fun and nothing else, but still it was such an accomplishment.

And the point of me telling you this is just that, look. I know what Kevin went though. I know how hard it was and I’m just in awe of how strong he’s been all though it. Every time I read a passage in the books that reminds me of that I want to start crying because I’m sooo proud of him and I feel like I am the one doing all that, and also, if I ever see someone talking about how weak and cowardly he is I’m just gonna unleash Neil Josten on them and let him wreak havoc (’cos we all know he would, lbr).