#chao time

okay so first of all, love that david seems to say this line while not looking at ANYONE. I know I mentioned in the last update that David really does seem like an outsider in his own family so it was nice to see this moment (and more evidence that Nick and David wear their hair in the same cut, but with a different style. They even have the same cowlick lol)

moment for outfit analysis bc i actually don't think we see nick in black very often outside of the truham uniform! i like that while nick is in short sleeves and a dark shirt with lighter pants, david is in a lighter colored jumper with dark pants. i do think colors play a lot when it comes to symbolism and i don't want to: 'well the curtains are blue because the mc is depressed' the situation. so lets move on.

COUGH COUGH WOW MORE EVIDENCE THAT NICK MIGHT BE AUTISTIC. I'M KEEPING THIS IN MY BACK POCKET FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. I love a black and white thinking king for real. But I also, something I'm thinking about since this is my third read of the chapter is that this sort of begins a conversation centered around the fact that Nick doesn't actually seem to understand his brother at all. His goals, his wants, etc. We the audience really don't know much about David beyond the fact that he's a shitty older brother, homophobic(maybe? i can't tell if he genuinely is or if he made a big deal of nick being with a man purely because it's his brother whom he doesn't like and wants to make life difficult for, regardless)

so nick went six whole months of being in the house with his brother and did not ask about why david and jess broke up until right this minute-- obviously for plot reasons i'm sure, but like... was he just avoiding david the whole time? i'm sure it's very possible they avoided each other as often as they could since they don't get along and this was how their last actual interaction went.

which i think is important to bring up again because while nick did have a good reason to bite david's head off given the way things went a few books ago, his mum told him that she told david he needed to be respectful and david really was just making basic polite conversation in this moment. is it award worthy? no, but he attempted civility and i think that's a solid sign of growth.

this moment stuck out to me, i think because david might be joking but also because it seems like david has succumbed to his fate as a "bad person" in not only nick's eyes but everyone's eyes including his own. something sarah told nick a few chapters ago was basically that nick didn't exactly have a great example for what a healthy relationship looks like-- david also didn't. this isn't to excuse the fact that david cheated but it is quite literally backed by statistics that people who've had their parents cheat on each other are more likely to cheat on their partners themselves. NOT ALWAYS, obviously, but when you're impressionable and see your role model doing something, it becomes normalized. i think david as a character seems to struggle a lot with empathy from what we've seen of him so i wouldn't be surprised if he also just doesn't have empathy for the fact that he cheated, especially with the "you might be next line" which is said rather casually. also loved nick's "like fuck i will" because you know what, yeah. if you want to break the cycle you really have to fucking work for it and nick's down to work for it.

i LOVE the genuine fucking shock on nick's face when david says he's going to paris. like the genuine surprise? incredible.

Now, what I really like about this is that David gives Nick a pretty healthy reality check, which has been a theme of this book. Nick puts on a mask, he struggles a lot with black and white thinking. He can only be "good" or "bad" never meh or gray or in the middle, and likewise David can't be either. I really was unsurprised that David mentioned that Nick holds both himself and David to this impossibly perfect standard because from what we've seen (and in the flashback), it seems like Stephane and lowkey Sarah pitted the boys against each other pretty early on. Why wouldn't Nick hold David to the same standard their dad holds them to when that's who he learned it from? I also liked that David says: "You can think I'm evil all you want." It's very much a laying all his cards out thing, especially since he's going to be in Paris where he and Nick are unlikely to see each other again without real effort to do so. David, unlike Nick, has already acknowledged his own flaws and misgivings for what they are. I also just don't think David is an evil person or character, I think he just fell victim to needing to be a papercut out antagonist in book 4.

I LOVE THESE FLASHBACKS SO MUCH. and what I like about this one is that David is having a VERY real emotion children of divorce go through. "You made my other parent go away. Why? Why did you do that?" kids do NOT understand the ins and outs of divorce and young David isn't wrong for being that angry about it, he's a kid. But what I gather from this is that Sarah probably didn't know how to handle David's emotions on top of her own, and thus looked to her "easier" child to checkup on. I'd also argue Nick probably made himself the easier child to protect his mum since David was being the way he was. "I'll be the good kid so my mommy doesn't stress out so much" (me too king), but what does this communicate to David? It communicates that Nick is Sarah's favorite. So naturally, I think David tried to earn Stephane's favoritism and realized it's literally impossible to achieve and likely just gave up given how resigned he seems in this chapter. David doesn't waste his energy putting on the same airs Nick does and I find that dynamic fascinating. At the very least David Nelson is completely himself even though that version is often shitty.

this really got to me because like, rereading that old nelson-spring dinner chapter i really do think that david is just starving for attention and sought it out in every way even if it meant being a fucking ASSHOLE to do so, it was a shitty attempt at earning his father's favor and obviously it blew up in his face but like. Idk. It is really hard for me sometimes to take that scene seriously because I'm very aware that Nick and Charlie were never in any real danger and I was in a situation where my sibling outed me and I was in danger so it's harder for me to have empathy or even like that specific moment in the series beyond liking that Nick finally stood up for himself.

"it ain't me babe" came on while i hit this bit and like wow. yeah you know what i'll say it. both david and nick are responsible for their dynamic especially now that they're older. they'll never be able to go back in time to be better but as shitty as David was and I do acknowledge he VERY OBVIOUSLY SUCKED AS AN OLDER BROTHER, we do not have enough context for how their dynamic has played out across their lives and I don't even think it's that important. I think what matters is that they both really needed to be in counseling while their parents were divorcing but that never happened, so.

now this! this is interesting. something im always curious about and for context-- i have six fucking siblings. i don't actually think nick knows his brother very well which is insane to me bc he only has the one. i think nick's made assumptions about david and kept his distance to protect himself but we as the audience don't even know what david was getting his degree in. although something i've noticed about HS is that we are missing a lot of smaller details about the nelson family in comparison to the Spring family which is both understandable as a writer but frustrating for me as a reader because these things matter when we're talking about character dynamics. like i think david went to scotland for school, right? which is also interesting to me bc like hm... was that the furthest away from all his family he could get?

I really do feel like this is the first time David's stance on their family situation has been acknowledged on page. "He hurt me too" carries so much weight bc so far it seems like Nick has barely been able to acknowledge his own hurt regarding his parents' divorce, but seeing that flashback-- David was clearly effected viscerally and Sarah lowkey dropped the ball on that, which is realistic.

genuinely made me a little teary eyed like wow you never really escape from being the hurt children you were, huh. siri play "when i grow up" from matilda the musical please. And my final piece of analysis for this chapter, although maybe I will do a write up on like... cheating and infidelity both as a literary device and also a very real world psychological problem. I think people forget that EVERYTHING a parent does whether it's cheat, do drugs, alcohol, whatever, makes their children far more likely to do those things themselves because it becomes normalized. yes there are exceptions and people do beat out statistics (I'm the statistic beater), but breaking out and doing better is incredibly fucking hard. i think maybe im emotionally too close to the whole cheating aspect of this situation in hs bc my parents and then my stepparents literally got together through cheating on their previous partners and then proceeded to cheat on each other and i witnessed almost all of it multiple times over and obviously it effected me. I just don't think Nick and David's dynamic is as simple as: "David's a homophobic bully of a brother" it's also Sarah was a permissive parent and Stephane was absent and so many other things. Okay, the last bit for real.

everyone saying i was going to like this update.... you were RIGHT!!! i loved this update so so much it was like magic for me. a) LOVE THAT WE FINALLY KNOW HOW OLD SARAH IS!!!! YAY!!! That means she was 32 when she had Nick and like, obviously I know people become parents later in life but my mom was a teen mom so I forget that like. people can have older parents??? how cool it must be 2 have a parent who had her shit together LMAO.

sarah is just so gorgeous i adore her.

lets look the exact same with mama!!!

reminded me of this

i do think there is something so sweet about charlie seeing nick's baby pictures. also going back i really do love that nick is basically just a minature sarah i love when media does that bc it's usually the sons looking copy paste of their dads but sarah's genetics really fought out in both her boys but it's more obvious in nick bc alice draws sarah and nick with the same eyes and nose.i also just ADORE baby nick and his bucket hat and shovel. if sarah was an 80's kid though im going to imagine teen sarah with the biggest hair i just KNOW she was that girl.

sorry jumping around a bit my eyeball is itching and i can't focus bc its probably a lash, anyway.

i really do think the importance of charlie saying this with the context of the dear diary comic is really important bc nick has never really had someone to protect him. which i will circle back to with david in a moment don't you worry. but nick has never had someone besides his mum in that protector role and part of why i think nick and charlie last so long is bc they both give each other what the other person needs without having to be asked. charlie has ALWAYS protected Nick since their first kiss and he never stops! he is the chihuahua from hell setting out to bite everyone's ankles if they dare hurt his boy while nick is the big golden retriever therapy dog.

im p sure this is the first time we've seen david smile in a non-malicious way and dare I say it, if he weren't malevolent as fuck in the earlier books i think people would like him more bc he has that rodrick, steve harrington swagger about him where he IS shitty but like there's potential. imagine if he has none and im just soo wrong. i do believe in a david redemption arc though and i think it's actually important for characters like david to grow and be better, otherwise there's just no point lmao. get that man a mood stabilizer and a marlboro gold and he'll be fine i promise.

i do love charlie's anxious little glance but again i am so scared we're gonna like flip-flop on the relationship anxiety. what i really wish we could flip on is having nick be messy drunk again but all over his fucking boyfriend like won't leave him alone, "you come around here often ;)" sloppy fucking drunk. bc i think it'd be funny, of course. i also like that nick is showing charlie off sooo proudly too. "THIS IS MY BOYFRIEND ISN'T HE GREAT" like yes baby he is. i hate to be like god nick really is a virgo but with all the relationship anxiety part of me always wonders if like breaking up just never crosses nick's mind? if he was like finished with that first smooch and was like; "okay so this is going to be forever, right? yes. yes it is." but also bc i don't think he wants to do or be with anyone else and not for codepesdency reasons but like. in love, sincerely knows he found his person way. HIS MOMMY SAID HIS LOVE IS SPECIAL THEREFORE IT IS. I hope Charlie and Sarah also get to chat about that at some point or maybe even Jane? bc fr Jane isn't one to talk when she and Julio got together in the way they did they were just a couple years older lmao so.

i always wondered if alice would ever touch on how difficult it is to imagine or even plan for the future when you're suicidal and mentally ill, so i'm glad she did that here bc it's still something i'm grappling with at my big age of 24 like. im flying by the seat of my pants bc i sincerely thought i was going to be killing myself at age 21 (i was too employed to do so and i have an anti-suicide dog pls do not worry about me). and i love how gentle julio is. I feel like we haven't had a solid moment with Charlie's parents in a while and I love that Julio is so gentle with his son

and i do think this moment really frames things for charlie bc it's hard feeling behind your peers or unprepared for the future and i imagine with his ocd, it's even doubly so. so julio giving him grace-- giving charlie permission to give himself grace is really important imo. it also shows that julio has been paying attention to his son. i always get the vibe that julio is more absent while jane is more hands on. for why? idk. personalities, maybe, or the fact that they both work and have three kids-- two of which are mentally unwell. that's really hard and i do feel like the fandom does not give the spring parents enough grace and i get it bc when i was 16 and off my rocker my parents could not do a damn thing right in my eyes so like idk!

the fact that olly runs to charlie and not julio is also one of those little things that highlights the spring family dynamic. in solitaire we know that tori is also very involved with olly while jane is pretty hands off and so is julio, and part of me has always wondered if jane has ppd after olly or like what went on there or if jane and julio have always been just. not there for any of their kids? both tori and charlie are fairly independent so it's possible and again, being that they're at sarah's party i have to consider the fact that nick is better emotionally adjusted than all of the spring family in general despite his parents being divorced. which like BIG W'S TO SARAH. but it's something to consider bc i think jane and julio are younger than sarah is and i do think age matters when it comes to parenting simply bc you learn more life skills as you get older and i feel like when you really know who you are, it makes parenting easier. but who is watching this?

david. who looks good as fuck in this chapter btw damn. two things i noticed. 1) he and nick have the same hairstyle but david pushes his hair out of his face. and 2) i don't think david looks as much like stephane as people think. i remember reading someone else's analysis where they said david keeps his hair out of his eyes to mimic his dad, but stephane's fringe actually falls into his face. so, what i think the purpose of keeping the hair out of his eyes is to fully differentiate him from all of his family. even auntie diane has a fringe.

(if this isn't auntie diane oops but either way, she's a nelson family member, so.)

i honestly wouldn't be shocked if the reason why david is so much of an outsider in his own family is because he knows something nick himself isn't privvy to about the family. something i'm wondering about is like... the reason why sarah and stephane divorced bc i don't think we yet know the reason. if it was cheating (and I suspect it was given david's own behavior about women but im happy to be proven wrong.), did david catch it as a child? we know stephane is very emotionally neglectful of nick, so the same is likely true for david as well and i wonder if as the older sibling, david was either made to save face for nick's sake and that presented as this aloof cruelty toward him, or if something else is up? bc the way he watches charlie interact with olly here definitely serves as a parallel. i do think tori and david are meant to be paralleled older siblings. tori is a good, over-protective, super hands on big sister at the expense of her own mental health, and david is super hands off, distant, and cruel at the expense of his relationship with his family. i don't doubt that he absorbed this behavior from stephane and it's not uncommon for children of divorce to be pitted against their parents, but david is never shown being disrespectful to his mother, just nick. im going to pose a theory that this might actually come from a place of nick's innocence regarding the divorce having been preserved while david was old enough to remember everything that went down for what it was. so, jealousy? and repressed anger because why does nick get to be coddled and david isn't? like yes obviously we know david is meaner than nick but WHY is he, because it doesn't make sense given what we know of sarah's parenting style. so if david reacted to the trauma differently than nick, got meaner and colder and retreated into that as a safety net bc nick was emotionally needier? yeah. ive been in david nelson's exact place before and even now it's incredibly hard not to resent my siblings who got that coddling i wasn't afforded because i was "old enough to not need it as much". i don't want to say that's 100% the case with the nelson family dynamic but i do think david and tori are similar in that they both seem to have this quiet anger about them, although david certainly lashes out more than tori does bc... well, he's a man and men are allowed to do that LMAO.

anyway, i am wondering if the way charlie interacts with olly reminds him of how he and nick used to be or if it's more of a. oh. that could've been us. i also am like wondering if charlie and olly's age difference is the same as david and nick's bc that would be really cool, honestly, especially bc we know olly and nick are very close or at least that nick really dotes on olly. perhaps he gives olly the attention he didn't receive??? idk. there's a lot to think about here.

darting back over to the "david tries not to look like his family" thing, something that stands out to me about this picture is the fact that david is pointier than his relatives. like. all of them, not just sarah and nick but also

okay so this chapter rlly is a good reminder that they are still teenagers learning to communicate but god. god this was such a sad one i think because charlie FINALLY called nick out but the way he went about it was just. bad? not blaming him bc he's literally just sixteen i think but jesus man. I might have this analysis be panel for panel so stay with me y'all.

now charlie is the one who said he wanted to talk tomorrow. i will go on record saying if nick could get away with not talking he'd 100% take that route bc i honestly don't think he's ready to unpack WHY he's so anxious because it doesn't seem like he fully understands why he feels the way he does; he just knows he feels shitty! and wow bingo bullseye right on the money call me a prophet the way i predict things bc yeah. rejection of the "thanks for taking care of me" pancakes. (which, nick feeling the need to give back in that way, providing something i believe is connected to the fact that he seems to use sex both bc he enjoys it but also as a means of "hey. stay with me. don't leave me. look at what i can do for you look at how i perform please don't go."), and u could literally put a broken glass filter over that bottom panel. yeah. nick talking about HIS feelings isn't gonna happen while charlie is doing poorly. like from nick's pov, how can he possibly open up about his own anxieties when his boyfriend won't eat? when he might be on the verge of a relapse? i think what makes this chapter difficult is the fact that nick and charlie don't know how to talk to each other the way they used to anymore. and i had this kind of revelation that it's been a little over a year since charlie's been to treatment, and that sort of means nick's been playing the supportive boyfriend for a majority of their relationship. those early days where they did share things, where nick was blubbering and all that? that was a literal FRACTION of their relationship. and that's not charlie's fault, it isn't his fault he's mentally ill but it is the situation that they are currently in and idk if either of them have had that realization but i sure have. that's hard.

what i love is that we actually see in real time nick switching into supportive/perfect boyfriend mode right in front of charlie. this is nick's default and i genuinely think nick doesn't understand that he's doing it, like this behavior feels subconscious to me. and while charlie has now spotted this behavior and is trying to call it out, the way he goes about it is just... not good! the equivalent of trying to give nick a high five and slapping him in the face in the progress. like again, friendly reminder that nick has at this point had one nightmare THAT WE KNOW OF involving charlie dying. his anxiety around losing charlie, not even in the breaking up sense but the LITERAL sense is a massive thing. i have to remind myself sometimes that charlie was suicidal, that he was hurting himself, and when i put myself in nick's shoes... i don't know if i'd be able to tell my partner about my own issues if i didn't know with 100% certainty if they were in the clear out of fear that if my issues compounded atop theirs, it'd make their mental health worse. it's a kind of guilt i'd never forgive myself for and i have in fact broken up with people when my situation has gotten so severe that i could not be an equally supportive partner (around 16-17, so, the same age as the boys.) like this situation is HARD to navigate and it's made worse by the fact that they really haven't seemed to talk much about charlie's mental health, nick just knows it's declining because he's not eating and imo, that's a good enough reason to not want to tell my boyfriend about my deeprooted abandonment issues bc... what if i made his mental health worse? THAT'S where i believe nick is at. moving on.

now here is the funny thing. charlie fully bulldozes over nick here despite wanting nick to talk. and we see that gray ink blotch getting bigger and bigger, we see nick starting to pull away. this is no longer a conversation this is "my boyfriend is upset with me, what do i need to do to make him not upset as quickly as possible so he doesn't leave me?" it's not a conversation, not by a long shot. I do think if Charlie hadn't cut him off, Nick would've kept deflecting and that could've turned into a conversation if Charlie said: "hey you're still deflecting, you're still turning this on me can we please not." and maybe it'd turn into a blow up fight or maybe nick would just start fucking blubbering and they'd get somewhere. but that didn't happen, and yeah im a little upset about it because for someone who wants nick to communicate, charlie doesn't do a great job at giving nick the chance to in this moment and i get it bc this issue has been festering for months but like. christ. charlie is right to call nick out on focusing on him all the time but like. from nick's perspective-- their early relationship was all about keeping nick safe and then coming out, but the rest of it has been about making sure charlie doesn't, like, die??? and yes, it is dramatic. he's seventeen it is very dramatic for him. they haven't talked much about it though, not in a real way. and just god. nick looks so fucking exhausted here it's not even funny and like REMINDER THAT HIS ASS IS DISGUSTINGLY HUNGOVER AS WELL. i wish nick would've puked on charlie in the middle of this, alas. im the only one always rooting for a good catharsis vomit. we're gonna circle back to the "why are you treating me like i'm fragile" thing because charles francis, you lowkey just proved your boyfriend's side of things, but first!

nick is so funny for this bc there was no therapy speak in anything charlie said, he was just being open, which again-- i just don't think nick KNOWS how to talk about this kind of thing as in doesn't have the vocab to even try. he hasn't been to therapy! he doesn't know these things! but i do think charlie was putting words in nick's mouth here bc nick never has seen him as fragile. nick thinks charlie is one of the strongest people alive and has ALWAYS thought so, but he's also an anxious wreck right now so he isn't showing that as much. i think the "you really dont' need to use your therapy speak on me" is less about therapy speak and more about wanting to be talked to like a partner, not as a sort of therapist + client relationship which nick may have seen it as with the way charlie kept talking. now back to the fragile thing.

oh hey look it's the reason why nick didn't want to tell charlie his bullshit happening on page in real time. charlie is leaving. he is walking away. nick has tried to be perfect and good and his boyfriend is leaving anyway. and here's the thing. i don't think nick's in the wrong for not talking to charlie because these panels literally prove why he receded into himself. his big feelings (and they barely scraped the surface, fuck man) made charlie cry, his "outburst" made him leave. and i'm legit getting a little choked up about it because how... how is nick actually supposed to talk to him after this when charlie's sort of proved that he is too fragile for this conversation or rather that nick is "too much". yes, having nick throw that back definitely hurt, i see that, but for all charlie spoke about wanting nick to talk to him, he doesn't give him the chance to in this specific moment and when things get hard, he walks away. that! shit! blows! it's understandable. i get it on a character level and obviously the story needs conflict for a reason but it's also like... charles... francis... spring... that boy has been by your side even when you were really fucking mean to him and you are WALKNG AWAY because he had a little outburst!? get real dude.