oops crying again ha ha sorry. i just realized andrew privably started feeling like he lost his mosnter mask after people found out about drake. because its not long after they all think they can control him into rehab, he falls for neil, his deal w aaron ends, etc.
and it further proves he shouldnt show weakness in his head if he wants to also remain in control and keep people safe: ie, if he didnt go to rehab he would have been there for kevin and kept neil from going to the nest; if he had kept neil at armβs length neil would not have tried to protect andrew by letting himself be kidnapped quietly; and he would have been entitled to keep his deal with aaron and keep him in bubble wrap away from a relationship that could devastate his twin.
so for a while there, before lots of therapy, andrew probably had the extra layer of hating thanksgiving because it was the last time he had a semblance of control.
So⦠this is canon, if you count the extra chapters. This was the passage that made me buy the Rainbow Crate bindings. Under read more because it is about the aftermath of Thanksgiving even though nothing is explicit.
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I am going to make a post about this because I simply cannot help myself and I want to put all my thoughts togheter regarding this.
I feel like there is a lot of defensiveness when people point out how the treatment of the Foxes (specially in TKM) might have been bad or unfair. So I am going to try to break this down.
Long as hell, so It Will be bellow the cut
First of all, I feel like it is important to make a distinction between moments in which the Foxes are just being Foxes (fighting, bickering, being assholes) and the moments where the critics to Kevin's treatment really are.
For example, Kevin and Seth's fights were totally an example of the second of case. Kevin was frustrated, both with his hand and with the fact he was now in a team considerably worse than the one he came from(and frustrated because Seth being his pair striker was probably a very bitter reminder of everything that had happened to him). Seth was frustrated not only with Kevin's constants critics and harsh push for performance, but also because Kevin was a bitter reminder of everything Seth wasn't by simple virtue of birth. Seth grew up being one more among a bunch of siblings with clearly neglectful parents. He grew up being treated as completely unimportant. So of course having The Great Kevin Day there in his team felt like rubbing salt on a wound.
They were both going through a shitty time and took it out on each other by constantly fighting and bickering. They were hurting so they hurted.
This type of conflict appears through the whole narrative with different characters. It is gennerally a two way conflict.
There are also moments that involve great emotional distress and you can understand why a certain character might have taken a certain action, even if that might have caused damage to another character (i.e choking incident. I have a post somewhere analysing it, so I definitely won't do it now, because this will get too long)
But the point is, specially in TKM, there are plenty of moments in which the Foxes are just unnecessarly cruel or unforgiving towards Kevin, specially in moments in which he is fragilized and this isn't adressed at all
1-We already start the book with Matt punching Kevin TWICE because of what happened to Neil. Kevin, who was probably already feeling horrible, didn't react or tried to fight back at all.
I don't think I really need to explain why punching someone who isn't reacting is a bad thing.
And yes, he was shocked, worried and mad because of what was done to Neil. Assaulting Kevin didn't change anything and also didn't 'punish' the right person. It was absolutely pointless.
Yes, Kevin didn't tell them where Neil was going. Maybe he didn't say anything for the same reason Neil went there in the first place. If Riko had enough of a levarege to force Neil to go, than he definitely had enough to make Kevin stay silent about it(which was true. Riko had Andrew and Kevin knew it. If he stopped Neil from going, whatever happened to Andrew would be his fault. Kevin did the right thing by allowing Neil to decide what he wanted to do and respecting it). But of course, instead of assessing the situation for 5 seconds, we jump straight to assume Kevin didn't say anything for giggles and kicks.
(Just to make it clear, this is not saying Matt is a horrible person. This is just me saying in this instance he was wrong)
2-Andrew threatening Kevin with a knife because of that stupid trip.
I hate this scene so much and on so many levels that it is not even funny anymore.
It makes me so sad that this is what Nora has decided to do with Andrew and Kevin's relationship.
Because the thing is: Kevin was never afraid of Andrew.
There is one other moment in the series in which Andrew lifts a knife to Kevin and this is when Kevin literally presses him against a wall and ignores his warnings to let go. Andrew uses the knife to nip Kevin and make him let go, and that is it. They are mad at each other, but there is no fear.
It is a heavy scene, but Andrew was completely on the right and doing it out of self defense(honestly, Kevin had that one coming from a mile away).
But in this instance in TKM, Andrew threatens Kevin for what? Being against a vacation? This is literally the most stupid reason Andrew threatened someone over in the series.
And the worst part is: even though this is a bluff, this happens a few days after the choking incident and Kevin is actually afraid of Andrew. So instead of calling Andrew out on it, like he would probably usually do, Kevin actually stops talking.
In other words: he is now afraid of the one person who used to protect him and this person is using this as a way to control his behavior.
Wonderful
Gets even better because no one ever touchs this subject again. Is Kevin forever afraid of Andrew now? Or was this just because it happened so soon after the choking? Will Andrew keep on acting like this towards Kevin now?
No idea, we are pretending it didn't happen
To think their relationship was essentially based on kevin's unwavering trust that Andrew could protect him and that is where it is by the end of the three books.
(And this isn't shade on Andrew, but on Nora's writting choices. Andrew gennerally uses violence whenever he feels like there is a threat, but here he seems to do it simply for control and to me it doesn't make much sense with his character at all. It also doesn't make sense with what happens after, because Nora signals Kevin is now afraid of Andrew and doesn't adress it any further. It is a fucking mess)
3-Then we have the shitshow that was the Foxes finding out Wymack is Kevin's dad
I find this one the worst of them all, to be honest. Their reaction bordered on cruelty. It wasn't just the Foxes being the Foxes. It was a complete lack of any consideration for another person.
After Kevin talks to Wymack, he and Neil go back to the Fox Tower and Kevin is clearly on the verge of a panick attack when Neil leaves the car. He has his hand in his face and cannot even speak, gesturing for Neil to go away. Neil interprets the gesture however he wants (as permission to tell the Foxes the truth) and goes up leaving Kevin there.
(Honestly, I believe Neil's intentions were good here, that is not the problem)
Neil gathers everyone and the Foxes react as if Kevin not telling Wymack is the worst absurd ever seen and Kevin is selfish because of it(wonder why the guy who was raised wihtout a father, has scaped a mafia run cult and has no where else to go felt like it was better to not reveal this information). Also, Kevin literally doesn't owe the information about his patternity to anyone. Getting mad at him is fucking WILD.
Dan makes a literal scandal, turns the situation onto something about herself and her feelings and how she is mad because >Kevin< hurt Wymack. No, not Kayleigh, who literally lied in Wymack's face. Not Tetsuji, who had this letter hidden all along and also didn't say anything while he broke and abused Wymack's child for a decade. No, none of them. Kevin. The kid who spent a decade raised as a human pet because his mother trusted the wrong person. He is the one who hurt Wymack.
This gets even worse when we learn Riko almost put a hit out on Wymack as things were. Of course Kevin was cautios about revealling the truth.
The Foxes make sure someone stays with Dan to console and take care of her, meanwhile Kevin was literally left alone on the verge of a mental breakdown inside the car. And he is still down there, alone, inside the car.
Because of course, the one that needs support here is Dan. Makes all sense in the world.
Right after all of this, Kevin is forced to go on that trip he didn't even want to go in the first place, with the team that is now mad at him.
At some point, Dan pushes Kevin aside to talk to him and Matt tells her to NOT STRIKE HIM ANYWHERE IT WILL BRUISE.
We don't get to know if Dan did hit him or not, but there is no excuse whatsoever for what Matt said.
It would already have been absurd if that was anyone else. You don't hit someone for growing up without a dad and being afraid to tell their dad the truth. Kevin had the right to take however long he needed to talk to Wymack. It is not a son's job to tell a father he is a father.
But the fact he said this about Kevin, who would suffer physical abuse constantly, everything in places that either could be hid by clothes or where it wouldn't leave bruisess, is absolutely horrible.
Then both Kevin and Dan come back from that talk and Kevin specifically sits on the OUTSKIRTS, which is how he spends most of the trip.
All those scenes are only made worse when we learn from Jean that Kevin would read Kayleigh's letter all the time. Or when we learn in the EC that Kevin's best non-Exy memory was finding the letter.
Those are just a few examples, all from TKM, which honestly I think is the worst part.
The whole idea of the series is that team unites around Neil and on the process, the rifts between them start to close. By this point in TKM the relationship between all of the Foxes is considerably better than it was during TFC . Of course, it is not perfect, far from it, but definitely better. They are all on their way to healing.
Except Kevin.
His relationship with essentially everyone has gotten worse (except Nicky and Aaron, I feel like it remained the same), he is isolated inside the team and constantly being belittled, berated and more than once the victim of unprovoked physical violence or threats.
The funny part is that he was way more of an asshole in TFC, and still he didn't get treated half as bad as he does in TKM.
So no, Kevin is not a sweet victim of the Foxes mistreatment for most of the time. He knows how to be violent and how to be an asshole. Most of the time he gives as good as he gets. That is what happens during the first two books.
But then we get to the end of TKM and it is just a sequence of the Foxes kicking Kevin while he is already on the ground, and there is no resolution.
(But of course, Kevin and his obsession are very useful when he appears left handed to play against the Ravens. Then he is a part of the team. When he might have been in need of support after the hard conversation he must have had with Wymack, he got a "don't strike him where it will leave a mark". But when he is "dancing circles around the Ravens defense line" then the fact is an obsessive bitch is very useful.)
This is not saying the Foxes are horrible, here the critic is mostly to the writing. Because what we essentially have is an arch of union and proximity between characters of which only one character is excluded. It is bad and it makes honestly amazing characters look horrible for no reason.
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As a Greek, in response to the current controversy about Matt Damon being cast as Odysseus, I'd just like to share that one of the moments that changed my brain chemistry as a kid was reading a novelized version of the Odyssey and coming across the following description of Odysseus when Circe sees him for the first time and thinks he's hot: "his hair curled like a clematis and his eyes were very brown".
So may I present my own casting choice for Odysseus:
andrew minyard never skips therapy. his best friend is a born-again knife-wielding christian ex-gangster. his other best friend is a 6'2" lacrossehockey prodigy/recovering alcoholic with a face tattoo. he doesn't smile. his situationship got him to stop doing drugs by buying him a maserati. he didn't meet his own twin brother until they were fifteen years old. he's been to jail. he is five feet even. he's the best goalie in the league and he couldn't care less. he gets in the shower fully clothed to give neil josten a blowjob. he's a chainsmoking pro athlete. he killed his own mother. he's getting a criminal justice degree as a joke. he picked the guy with a dozen fake names and a mafioso daddy to be with forever. he's a scorpio. the closest thing he's ever had to a father is his college exy coach. he loves hot chocolate and ice cream and clubbing with his cousin.
unfinished kevneil/implied kandreil fic with nonbinary neil and dysphoric kevin in lingerie . if anyone wants it
kevin is going to kill neil. itβs the least they deserve for all the shit theyβve put the team through. put him through. heβs going to kill neil and get andrew to help hide the body and no one will ever know the shit neil does to him (except for andrew, but he gets a pass because he isnβt as fucking smug as josten about it) and thenβ
he shivers. glares up at neil, whoβs running the tips of their fingers over his skin, just the suggestion of touch over his sides and down his thighs. theyre not looking at kevin. they only have eyes for the emerald green lace sitting on his hips, eyes tracking over the barely contained shadow of kevinβs dick.
he brings his knees up, tries to get josten to look somewhere else, but their eyes just jump to the matching bra. because of course they got him a matching set. never mind that he doesnβt have tits, never mind that his body is all the wrong shapes and all the wrong sizes, never mind that he feels like he could wither away from shame at any second.
neil had asked.
neilβs hand slides up his thigh, big and warm and heavy against kevinβs trembling muscles. their finger edges up the side of the waistband and snaps it, just hard enough to make him jolt, and has the fucking audacity to laugh.
βcute,β they say, and kevin shudders under the weight of their desire. βdont hide, i wanna see how andrew dressed you up for me.β
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Ykw you having a good day, decide to open tumblr and the first thing you see is someone saying how kevin day is actually a selfish monster for making jean. Yk. Not kill himself? And him giving him up to the trojans is not out of care actually! Just guilt?
Then you stop and be like "ok, enough Internet for today" and close your phone.
NO I FEEL YOU OMFG I HAD THE SAME EXACT REACTION..
they donβt get the fact that if kevin didnβt stop jean from killing himself there wonβt be jean in the goddamn series..JEAN ALIVE BC OF KEVIN!! Like how could you hate the person that saved your fav life and end up giving him a future and better, healthier life in general.. NEIL AND JEAN POVS ARE UNTRUSTWORTHY since neil didnβt gaf and jean was fresh out of the nest and still blaming kevin for everything.
modern social media should stop offering "sync with your phone contacts to follow them" options and start offering "block all your phone contacts so they never see your account" options
I am once again posting this excerpt from Why Does He Do That?
"MYTH #4: He holds in his feelings too much, and they build up until he bursts. He needs to get in touch with his emotions and learn to express them to prevent those explosive episodes.
My colleagues and I refer to this belief as 'The Boiler Theory of Men.' The idea is that a person can only tolerate so much accumulated pain and frustration. If it doesnβt get vented periodicallyβ kind of like a pressure cookerβthen thereβs bound to be a serious accident. This myth has the ring of truth to it because we are all aware of how many men keep too much emotion pent up inside. Since most abusers are male, it seems to add up.
But it doesnβt, and hereβs why: Most of my clients are not unusually repressed. In fact, many of them express their feelings more than some nonabusive men. Rather than trapping everything inside, they actually tend to do the opposite: They have an exaggerated idea of how important their feelings are, and they talk about their feelingsβand act them outβall the time, until their partners and children are exhausted from hearing about it all. An abuserβs emotions are as likely to be too big as too small. They can fill up the whole house. When he feels bad, he thinks that life should stop for everyone else in the family until someone fixes his discomfort. His partnerβs life crises, the childrenβs sicknesses, meals, birthdaysβnothing else matters as much as his feelings.
It is not his feelings the abuser is too distant from; it is his partnerβs feelings and his childrenβs feelings. Those are the emotions that he knows so little about and that he needs to 'get in touch with.' My job as an abuse counselor often involves steering the discussion away from how my clients feel and toward how they think (including their attitudes toward their partners β feelings). My clients keep trying to drive the ball back into the court that is familiar and comfortable to them, where their inner world is the only thing that matters. For decades, many therapists have been attempting to help abusive men change by guiding them in identifying and expressing feelings. Alas, this well-meaning but misguided approach actually feeds the abuserβs selfish focus on himself, which is an important force driving his abusiveness.
Part of why you may be tempted to accept 'The Boiler Theory of Men' is that you may observe that your partner follows a pattern where he becomes increasingly withdrawn, says less and less, seems to be bubbling gradually from a simmer to a boil, and then erupts in a geyser of yelling, put-downs, and ugliness. It looks like an emotional explosion, so naturally you assume that it is. But the mounting tension, the pressure- cooker buildup of his feelings, is actually being driven by his lack of empathy for your feelings, and by a set of attitudes that we will examine later. And he explodes when he gives himself permission to do so."
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ik i rant about the wymack stuff a lot but god it is rough
Neil outright admits he stole Kayleigh's letter and has had it for MONTHS without Kevin knowing. Like, one of the only personal things he has of hers has been at Palmetto this whole time and now is being used against him.
And Neil outs this in front of the entire team and Neil explicitly switches to English saying that Kevin is going to go public about who his father is putting Kevin on the spot while he's actively telling Neil no.
(And this is after Kevin kept Neil's own secret for months on his behalf and literally just got choked out over it)
And like, Neil is right! The identity of who Kevin's father is has been a media spectacle since Kevin was born...because Kayleigh in her lifetime never wanted revealed. Like, Kevin would be outing something his mother never wanted to be public knowledge for several reasons.
The text validates that this is the right choice because Wymack is owed this information and it is "long past" when Kevin should have told him which feels so unfair. Kevin has no idea how Wymack would have taken the news that he was his father (canonically he doesn't take it well) and is literally on the run from his mob cult who wants him dead. If he miscalculated then he could be screwed.
And like, idk, I think if you want anyone to blame maybe it should be Kayleigh? Not Kevin who had no say in his mother's choice to hide it or his parents hooking up in the first place?
I think the worst part is when Neil tells the Foxes and shows far more empathy for their reaction to Coach being Kevin's father than for Kevin himself...and Kevin is doing this FOR NEIL.
And like I get it. Neil is a survivalist who would see this as something to use but the narrative and the Foxes at large all seem to agree this is for the best. That Kevin has deeply wronged Wymack by not telling him. And like...you're telling me none of the Foxes would understand Kevin and his daddy issues? The daddy issues team?
