there comes a point in caring a lot about avery belle that you unfortunately begin to care about julius tremaine and also start shaking your head at the way some people talk about their friendship lmao
obviously, avery 1000000% deserves better than the treatment that they get from people in town, and they give julius a lot of grace that he does not really deserve, and julius is absolutely still afraid of the fact that he can have a Feeling about someone, but the way avery talks about him makes me think they'd still try to be friends with julius even if they did actually feel accepted by the community. they seem really proud that they've been able to get past a lot of his defenses and feel like it's rewarding. their experiences with him are also way different than everyone else's (including the players!) and those experiences are why they're so willing to go to bat for him and believe that he's not this fundamentally evil person everyone else is trying really hard to convince them that he is.
like that's their 50+ year old libertarian bestie who doesn't understand castle doctrine and is going to prison for sure because of it. that's their problematic nasty old man fav that everyone else hates but who'd be there for them if they were in trouble and who shows up for them. that's their emotional support curmudgeon who grumbles at them from the corner when they call him out for being an asshole, but who'll make them a bench with his own two hands without them ever asking for it. like maybe they are both very lonely but also just kind of have questionable taste in guys they're willing to befriend.
tbh I often feel like people write off/downplay Avery's friendship with Julius because they personally don't like Julius and find him off-putting.
Like, yeah, Julius is off-putting (and clearly supposed to be! but uh, so's y'know, Tabitha lol), but him and Avery are truly friends and do mean something to each other. Julius is the only one who's truly noticed and paid real attention to Avery.
They're fully capable of bantering back-and-forth with one another. Their interactions certainly don't read like Avery's just settling for Julius's friendship out of inability befriend someone else.
They also do have similarities to each other and ways they can relate beyond just being lonely. Yes, they're both lonely outsiders to the town, but they're also both estranged from their families (minus Winnie for Avery of course). Julius from the Calloways (as far as we know, his only living family) and Avery from their parents to the point where they "don't have any other place to go back to."
They both make repeated bids for connection in a town that ignores them. Avery with their community garden - which they repeatedly state is supposed to not be *theirs* alone but *public*, yet they're the only one who works on it. Who's the only other person who's contributed to it? Yeah, Julius. And Julius himself sure spends a lot of time at the diner for someone who supposedly wants to be left alone.
Also, I feel like it's often ignored that Avery enjoys weirdness and strange things. They like the ditchlings, they're excited to have been possessed by a ghost, they want the pumpkin baby to live, etc etc... And Julius, quite frankly, is weird. Avery's repeatedly shown to be almost amused by Julius's strangeness - the bear traps and other booby traps, that he's grumpy and barely speaks. Avery isn't some kind of poor victim who somehow missed Julius's red flags. They've noticed all of Julius's red flags and seem to like him maybe even because of those red flags.
Also, re:Avery liking Julius for reasons beyond just loneliness - yeah! Beyond Avery's dialogue that directly says that (feeling "accomplishment" in having won him over), there's Avery's later comments in the basement about desperately wanting to feel that they're important to someone. So being the one and only person capable of befriending a man who an entire town describes as unlikeable and someone who pushes people away on purpose? Being the one who Julius chooses to call for help? There's a sense of importance to be found there.
