looking forward to ur review of tgr :)
so yeah i don't like what these books are doing😬
not the foxes - the foxes are talented brilliant amazing show-stopping as always. love that neil is still a pathological liar. love that andrew is still a menace to society. love that both of them still take turns babysitting kevin. you probably know i'm an aroace kevin truther but honestly? kevin *all i want in life is to play the perfect game* day and thea *supremacy on the court above all else* muldani are a match made in heaven. this is the aro4aro rep we need. love renee's cameos too. the foxes vs ravens fight was harrowing but in narrative terms it was also the only logical escalation of their conflict, to say nothing of the fact that it was the only moment in this entire book (that is somehow longer than tkm) where literally anything happened that elicited any emotions from me. having to return to the trojans and their match with whoever the fuck was super jarring. it's like you're made to acknowledge that the real story is taking place elsewhere and then forced to stay over here where nothing interesting is happening to anyone important.
ig people often criticize the plotlessness in jean's trilogy and then other people counter that this is a feature and not a bug bc the story is a character driven narrative about healing from trauma and rediscovering yourself etc etc. while i agree with the idea that neil and jean are different people who require different story structures, i don't think that jean's books succeed at this slow-moving character study/development format. when people defend something as character driven, they usually mean that the character work in a text is its raison d'être, which is why the author channels the narrative resources they could've used for the plot into the character work, making it superior to the one in a plot-driven book, for example. i don't think the character work in the new series is that good - or any good at all when compared to the supposedly more plot-driven og trilogy.
jean and jeremy are the only characters with any depth but neither of them is interesting to follow. jean lacks agency and, while i understand that this is how his trauma manifests, i simply cannot get invested in his arc bc he just does whatever he is told. he used to do bad stuff bc he was surrounded by bad people, now he's doing good stuff bc his good friends the trojans tell him to be nice, practice self-care, turn the other cheek etc. this is a simplified and unserious idea of healing that is apparently rather appealing to many but to me feels condescending and narratively bankrupt. i don't want to read about the therapeutic power of cooking, gardening and other cozy cottagecore activities in my sports mafia books. i wish jean had joined the foxes after all. maybe his Healing Journey wouldn't have been as straightforward but it would've made for a much more compelling, meatier story.
taken by itself jeremy's tragic backstory is quite solid, however when contrasted with other major aftg characters his problems come off as annoying. to quote a goodreads review i just saw: jean is out there reenacting a little life and jeremy is sad bc the only person in his family who likes him is his butler - who he has. in his mcmansion. boohoo a tear for your discomfort :// ik we're not discussing trauma as if it were a competition but let me just say - there's a reason we find out about matt's and allison's backstories mostly from the extra content. at any rate, the deep dive into jeremy's sad family life doesn't add anything particularly valuable to his character bc the development is lacking. while jean goes on his flimsy self-actualization journey, jeremy remains boringly static. i suppose he will get an emancipation arc in the last book but, given that he's one of the two pov characters and the love interest besides, it will be too little too late.
speaking of romance, i don't feel any chemistry between them. from time to time one of them will mention in their inner monologue that he finds the other one attractive and ig they do become friends but there's no spark, no tension of any kind. why should these two characters end up together, beyond the fact that they're two queer guys who keep hanging out? idk maybe this is just a personal preference but i was much more invested in jean's unrequited crush on kevin. this jerejean book made me a kevjean shipper, i hope y'all are happy now😐
the rest of the trojans are non-characters. i still cannot tell cat and laila apart, to say nothing of the rest of the team and staff. sure, i know more facts about them - laila's uncle owns the house, cat's the one with the motorbike, coach rhemann has a husband, this teammate is trans, that one uses they/them pronouns, these two are himbo jocks, there's a bunch of people with ethnic names so we know the trojans are a diverse team - but i don't know who they are, what purpose they serve in this story or why i should care if their home burns down. (seriously, when it comes to lost property i care a lot more about neil's murder racquet that was confiscated in trk and still hasn't been returned >:( ). in fact, now it has become painfully clear that this is a typical case of style over substance type of minorities representation - the surface level rep is in your face but there is nothing material behind it. it says nothing, it doesn't make for interesting characters or serve any other narrative purpose. it's just nora's failed attempt to address the common criticism of the lack of diversity in the og trilogy.
while the trojans are hardly convincing as individual characters it can be argued they work as sort of a collective character - a smiling faceless crowd whose job it is to therapy speak at jean (who already goes to two different therapists) until he heals from his trauma in real time. toxic positivity is not the right word to describe this but i hope you understand what i mean. absolutely suffocating to read bc there is no push and pull. jean brings nothing to these relationships so it ends up feeling like he just joined another cult.
(one notable exception to this problem imo would be tanner: he's interested in the raven drills and jean is interested in improving the trojans' skills so the contrast of their personalities is complemented by this mutual exchange and benefit and both guys can bond over exy, you know, the titular Game in "All for the Game"? tbh given how much exy is actually played in tsc and tgr nora should've just filed jean's books under a new series called "The Game? I Don't Know Her"🙄 anyways as a result, instead of coming off as an overused gimmick their antisocial great dane vs playful golden retriever puppy dynamic does feel genuinely cute and endearing. i wish nora used this reciprocal approach with other relationships in the series, instead of just having everyone baby jean around all the time.)
my thoughts keep coming back to the conversation between jean and cat (or laila? i honest to god have no idea which one of them) after the banquet where he says that it doesn't matter that everyone liked him bc he had to perform this civil persona in compliance with the trojans' public image (and to subvert people's expectations of his raven behavior) and she gives him a lecture about being kind and polite as if he's a 3yo. he says people didn't meet the real him and she insists the rude obnoxious jean is not the real him, the implication being it's his raven trauma shadow self that he has to hide and overcome or in any case keep it in check so that it doesn't negatively influence his relationships. this to me feels like a notable reversal of what aftg has always been about, of what makes it special: the foxes' "life fucked us over and we're gonna make it everyone else's problem and, guess what, we'll find friendship, love, respect and fulfillment even so" becomes the trojans' "take your rant to the group chat, only post good vibes and positive affirmations on main". i wonder if this change in philosophy can to a certain extent be explained by the fact that aftg was conceived and written mostly in the early-ish days of the internet whereas jean's books are being written in the age of online performativity and the digital panopticon of social media.
the last thing i want to discuss is the trojans' ethos of sportsmanship, expressed in these new books as radical nonviolence in the face of their opponents' cruelty, radical turning of the other cheek, as it were. i don't know about that. in simplified terms, one could argue that the ravens were very good at exy bc they're evil and the trojans are good at exy bc they're kind. however, remarkably, when the two teams were pitted against each other the ravens consistently prevailed. it took a team that had the best of both worlds and a couple of tricks up their sleeve on top of that in order to end the ravens' reign. two books later it appears that the foxes are still the only feisty kid on the block who is brave enough to stand up to a bully and they're getting whumped for it like nobody's business, while everyone is gasping and sighing in commiseration, "those poor foxes can't catch a break", as if their misfortunes just happen randomly and not in retaliation for their dedicated and proactive campaign to rid their favorite sport of corruption and harassment. i'm not saying that the trojans' should engage in some sort of militant activism but i am saying i liked their famed sportsmanship much more back when it was expressed as this moment of chivalric solidarity with the underdog instead of disarming catchphrases or banquet respectability politics or whatever. now that the foxes took one for the team (again) and eliminated the ravens they finally created a playing field where the trojans' nonviolent approach can win a championship - which does feel like an overall positive for everyone but,, no thanks to the latter🤷♀️
