Doctor and Pierrot don't mention her at all, but we know that Pierrot was her protector and felt something for her - that's something that stays more or less unchanged through all the versions of the story.
It also seems that her color is pink - like the ticket Ticket taker offers us and like the fools. "What's up with the fools" is probably another mystery we'll have to solve through the game though we might have an idea already (unpaid labor and possibly food?).
How fools can be connected to Columbina I cannot guess (other than the "food" part. But I'm sure it's deeper than that.) but one thing I find interesting - Pierrot doesn't call them "fools" when we ask, that's a name we get from Harlequin.
Pierrot calls them "Jesters and Harlequins".
Jester and Harlequin - the two circus members who have a show about Columbina. The two that are probably most involved with her untimely demise. (And yet Pierrot doesn't seem to hold any animosity towards Jester. So his beef with Harlequin is... maybe unrelated to that? Or it's just Harlequin's attitude that's rubbing him the wrong way? Who knows really).
I also find it super interesting that for all the possibly love triangle between Columbina Pierrot and Harlequin, from the AMA we learn it's actually ticket taker who was supposedly the closest to her, and he also seems to get along with jester just fine. As for his relationship with Harlequin... from what we have now, tt and pierrot's aggravation towards harlequin's seems enterely due to his ragebaiting attitude.
Also, from the AMAs, we know that Ticket Taker ad Jester are the ones who have more fools. Pierrot doesn't have any and doesn't seem to enjoy having them? Harlequin supposedly has rules about them (?) and doctor..... does doctor things, apparently (and unsurprisingly).
...what does it mean? What does it all mean???
This... I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this. It feels like I'm trying to solve a puzzle but I only have, like, 3 pieces and an out-of-focus part of an image.
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As a fan of The Freak Circus, some of y'all can't accept the fact that the shit the clowns be doin is literally textbook S/A
Listen, I find the game interesting, I like the lore, I like the concept of a circus traveling around to harvest souls/bodies and shit
But y'all keep excusing the clown's acts because they're "monsters" and "don't understand the idea of s/a or boundaries"
LMAAO
So they're smart enough to start a circus and travel around to kidnap people for their circus but not smart enough to know that the shit they're doing is bad?? Aight dude
Stop excusing their actions just to have ur cute uwu romance
You can still find them hot and do y/n x pierrot or y/n x harlequin bullshit, i literally do not care, it's a dating sim after all, but when y'all excuse their actions to make the romance more "palatable" then honestly you should just fuck off
Okay but tell me WHY the Olympics are such a big thing in exy. Like is exy being grouped in with sports like figure skating? Or does it get group with sports like soccer where there is the World Cup. No one really cares about Olympics soccer. It’s all the World Cup (and Continental Cups).
That's a very interesting question.
I think the Olympics are A Thing for two main reasons. These all take the point of view of the writer, and not the canon world (even though I'm not in Nora's head, of course, so this is just what makes sense to me):
1) Exy was conceptualized as a Japan thing first and foremost
2) Once the US became the setting, the sport needed to have international standing
Japan is big on Olympics. It took part in basically every single Game from 1912 onward.
No one cares for Olympic soccer but you can still find youtube reaction videos of Americans being flabbergasted that the World Cup is bigger than Super Bowl. Hockey, one of Exy's big brothers, has different and independent world championships going on which are just chaos to me. Ice Hockey "World Cup of Hockey" managed to see the light of day only 3 times. Did you know that Lacrosse has a World Championship? I didn't. It's only after 1998 that people outside US-Canada-Australia-England started participating.
At the end of the day, if you need a trophy that instantly gives international reputation and social standing to a sport based on people's perception of "How big are you if you win X", then the Olympics are the obvious choice, because everything else is considered big based on national trophies.
If you want to consider the canon world:
"The first professional teams were formed around the graduates of the first university teams. Two years later the national team, the US Court, was born. The following year Exy made its first appearance at the Olympics, where Japan took home the gold."
The Olympics bridged the gap between Japan (where the sport was born) and the teams on the other side of the world, allowing them to compete against each other. They could have organized a world championship, sure, but the Olympics sound so much better and more distinguished lol
Knives are a risky and unreliable form of self defense. The common wisdom is that the winner of a knife fight gets the reward of dying in the ambulance rather than on the ground. Knives are close range weapons, and even if your opponent is unarmed you can injure yourself if you are not experienced. It’s no wonder that after experience on both ends of knives and guns, Neil would prefer a gun as a weapon. It’s also no wonder that in the entire series, knives are never used in actual combat.
Despite the whole knife boy aesthetic that Andrew has, AFTG really doesn’t claim that the knives help him in violent situations. He threatens people with his knives, but he uses brute force to inflict damage. Even so, the knives seem more integral to Andrew as a character than his physical strength (which Neil, our narrator, sees as almost a consequence of Andrew’s temperament). Maybe it’s because Neil’s history with knives inflates their prominence, or maybe it’s because of what the knives represent to Andrew…
The sheathes for Andrew’s knives are physically woven into his armbands—which I believe he wore well before receiving the knives from Renee. The armbands serve a primary purpose of protecting Andrew’s privacy and vulnerability. The knives, then, are linked directly to protection.
Nonetheless, Andrew’s knives never protect Andrew himself. It seems a bit of a metaphor, that the knives—which he uses to protect those he cares about—are hidden by the same armbands which hide the part of himself he will not even bare to his own family.
Within the context of AFTG, Andrew’s use of knives stands out. Most of the time, knives are associated with torture—specifically when Neil is restrained or unable to defend himself. Knives are an object of fear for Neil, not necessarily due to fear of harm or death, but due to the helplessness that they have become tied to. Andrew, on the other hand, uses his knives as instruments of autonomy, rather than harm.
WEI WUXIAN AND MO XUANYU / NEIL JOSTEN AND NATHANIEL WESNINSKI. A STUDY IN SAYING GOODBYE TO ALTERNATE SELVES.
Okay so! I reread AFTG a little while ago for my latest wip focusing on Baltimore, and I noticed one of the things I really adored the first time. I couldn’t grasp why, but now I do. To me, so much of Neil’s story is him saying goodbye to Nathaniel. It’s how he can move forward, after all. He has to both accept Nathaniel’s existence and say goodbye to it at the same time, because he cannot be Nathaniel anymore. Neil has a future. Nathaniel never did.
It’s the same with Wei Wuxian and Mo Xuanyu.
For both of these characters, there can be no future for them without the death of their past. Neil cannot be Neil if Nathaniel never left. Wei Wuxian cannot be Wei Wuxian if Mo Xuanyu never did that sacrifice. Both Nathaniel and Mo Xuanyu have to die for Neil and Wei Wuxian to live.
I don’t think I’ve threaded my thoughts on Mo Xuanyu before, but it’s so intriguing to me that he can be such a key part of MDZS, while also being someone where, if he were alive, the story would be unable to continue. There is no narrative without him — there is also no narrative with him. In CQL, he doesn’t even have his own actor. It’s just xiao zhan there at the beginning. There is nothing about Mo Xuanyu that isn’t intrinsically bound to Wei Wuxian.
The price of the sacrifice is more than just destruction of his soul, it is destruction of his entire metatextual character and narrative. He has to die for Wei Wuxian to be able to live — it’s the same for Nathaniel and Neil. There cannot be both of them, there can only be one of them.
While I think it’s an incredible way to convey the way we leave our past selves behind, I also find it incredibly tragic. Nathaniel and Mo Xuanyu were children. Abused and suffering, and they still gave up themselves in order for their body to go forward into something better. But the knowledge of that hurts. Knowing that you must die in order for you body to go on with someone else into a life you would never be able to afford, love only achievable as long as you have been buried beneath your other self.
You are an offering. You were born and then you died and then you lived again as someone else. It’s such a bittersweet sentiment. Nathaniel and Mo Xuanyu were half dead already and knew what they were giving away as soon as they gave themselves up to a different self, but it still makes me so incredibly sad.
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I think that all throughout AFTG Andrew believes Nicky to be weak for wearing all his emotions on his sleeve, for going back to abusive parents, for investing in such a doomed relationship. He thinks that Nicky stays with his cousins first bc he is trying to play Happy Family and is desperate for love and affection.
And THEN he’ll come to realize that it is so much harder to allow yourself to be open and vulnerable, to still choose to forgive and extend some second chances to people you love, to decide to love despite the challange of it. He realizes that Nicky stayed with his cousins because he chose them as his family and wanted to give them the love and affection he believed they deserved.
Nicky has had more years of healing from his own trauma and i feel like everyone forgets about it sometimes. And him and andrew dont have the intrinsic understandings of one other that Aaron & Nicky might share for having been raised together by the same family. Or that Andrew finds with Aaron or Neil for their similar dispositions.
But one day Andrew might be with Nicky & Erik, and (just like Neil realizes about Nicky) Andrew realizes that he’s failed to imagine his cousin complexly and that maybe Nicky is actually strong in all the places Andrew once thought he was weak.
Andrew Minyard truly breaks my heart. Yeah, because let’s give this broken boy who was abused and sexually assaulted time upon time again, an eidetic memory, why don’t we?
Andrew used to be convinced it was a curse, even though he tells himself he doesn’t believe in that kind of thing. What else can such a harsh breed of irony be? He never believed it when Cass told him how gifted and intelligent it made him, because to him, it’s been nothing but a mockery, something wickedly capable of immortalising the pain he’s been through.
He is cursed. He is cursed to have every trivial detail of a world that he so loathes, burned into his mind like a brand like a burden he did not ask for.
Andrew’s brain is a constant horror reel. His memories are acidic, and they do nothing but usher bile to his throat. He has memories with teeth that only exist to gnaw at him. Violent, ugly, unbearable memories that he might’ve learned to somehow repress, if only he had the ability to forget. Time doesn’t heal shit when your every yesterday is a scab you can’t scratch away, burned into your brain like a shallow grave and dug right back up on the daily. No, Andrew does not want to remember it like this. Not like this. The dirtiest press of hands and every brutal line that curves like a fault along them. The vapid twist of their wet, demanding mouths, inching towards his sprained face. The unwanted weight atop of him- and the details he can’t even speak of, the ones that he can see like a crystal clear reflection in water at night, corroding the expanse of calm black behind his eyes.
Andrew is tired. Tired of all this futile information that he takes in without quite meaning to, information that travels like a flame over frostbitten skin. He remembers the face of every man whose ever laid a hand on him. He remember what it felt like. The horrid invasion of privacy, of breath, of body, of any will he might’ve ever had to remotely care to keep existing. Sometimes the thoughts will creep up on him without invite. When he’s in the shower (splintered bathroom mirrors & quivering fingers), on court (a racquet slammed down against solid ground & breath torn out of burning lungs), midnight (wide awake and sheets a wreck) and they won’t go away. They won’t let him rest.
They were in his head. They were in his skin. Reminders of everything he’d lost, everything that’d been taken from him, drilled into him like bullets
The bliss the pills offered him was a vacant mind, frazzled memories ridden slippery and sinking away from him. Good fucking riddance.
The nicotine helps. When the smoke infiltrates his system and he allows his mind to take a backseat. The stale memories giving way to ashes.
Bee teaches him about positive reinforcement. Take the thing that hurts you, look it in the eye, and then, throw it away. Replace the hole it rips through you with something new, something healing. Remember, your past does not dictate you. It’s quite the other way around.
So he takes memories of bloodstained bedsheets and his heart escaping his chest and the worst glimpses of flesh and replaces them with other things. He focuses instead, on the sound of Nicky’s laughter when he beats Aaron at Crash Bandicoot or cracks up at his own lame joke, the crease in between Aaron’s eyebrows when he’s sat against the wall with his head buried in a biology book, the crucifix at the base of Renee’s neck and how it glints when it catches the light, the rabid gleam in Kevin’s eyes when he stands, unshakable on court.
And Neil, Neil, Neil.
Neil’s unwavering respect for his boundaries, that annoyingly knowing look in Neil’s eyes that never fails to set the alarm bells off in Andrew’s head, Neil’s mouth on his; reducing everything else to violent, beautiful nonexistence. Neil’s ability to make him feel.
His imagination is vivid, and fantasising about being in bed with Neil is a whole lot more interesting than whatever activity he’s reluctantly participating in at the time. Someplace where touch is sacred, and Andrew can pull animal noises out of Neil without having to flinch at the sound, where his body does not hold him back, and he can touch and be touched without having to be afraid, without his stomach bottoming out from under him, without his hands shuddering and head clanging. Some place safe and secret, his to venture to and seek comfort in as he pleases. Losing himself to thoughts of Neil changes things. It keeps him anchored to reality, even when he feels like he’s fading away again, because Neil Josten is not just a fantasy. He’s real. This thing in between them is real. This is something Andrew gets to keep, gets to learn, gets to take his time with, gets to love, without having to call it love.
Nothing can take this away from them.
This stagnating, mesmerising, healing thing he won’t put a name to because names don’t matter. Not to them.
He doesn’t ever forget, and at this point, he doesn’t want or even need to. After all, he has no place for regrets, or rumination over a past long dead. The thoughts never go away. They never will, but they’re less frequent, less scarring, less volatile. There are still nights he wakes up to the sound of his own blood rushing through his ears, his body seized in phantom reflex, his heart a battering ram trapped in his ribs.
There’s Neil’s gaze like clockwork, full of concern and knowing. He keeps his hands to himself whenever Andrew gets like that. No touch, not even one of support, is extended without an affirmation of consent. The stubborn idiot would wait a century, if that was what it took. And Andrew is grateful, and he’s relieved, and he’s in love. He won’t ever say those things out loud, won’t make the notions tangible; susceptible to the light. He doesn’t need to. He knows Neil feels the same way.
He can’t afford words as shallow and spat around as love.
This is something quickening and dizzying, like falling from a great height.
And maybe it isn’t such a curse being able to get every single one of Neil’s scars down to a tee when he closes his eyes and pictures him naked under his own body, or the twist of his mouth when he smiles that ebbing, genuine smile, reserved for when the two of them are alone and aching, or the way his lips blaze a riot against his, or the feeling of soft hair caught in between his coarse fingers.
Andrew learns to live with it. He’s good at that, learning to live with things, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
He sleeps better when it’s with Neil pressed into his chest, a hand clasped over his heart as if to shield it.
The road to recovery is slow, agonising, winding, torturous and somedays, seemingly unending, but every single time he thinks he might just wander off the taunting goddamn edge, Neil brings him back home.
“he sounds like neil but he doesn’t look like him.”
@frxnkenstein and ayah wanted this out there so
this shade of red looked familiar.
david gathered his striker in his arms and closed the door with his hip. hair burrowed its way under his chin as he walked towards his apartment.
it bothered him. not just the memory at the tip of his tongue, teetering over the edge, but also the weight in his arms. or lack thereof. athletes should weigh more.
in his junior and senior years, david coached the baltimore little leagues. little children running around in borrowed gear, bringing the community together. he realized his dreams twenty-five years ago, letting children play non-contact exy in soccer fields made to look like exy fields, let them forget what brought them to the streets he'd belonged to not so long before he started coaching.
on the fifth year of its existence, gear was hard to come by, especially with teams from the inner city. since it was non-contact, children made do with the lack of helmets.
this shade of red looked familiar and it was bothering him.
the back liner that insisted on playing shirts on a practice scrimmage, looking ecstatic every time he blocked a shot, even though wymack had to reprimand him not to tackle the strikers. his mother thanking him for letting her son enjoy the game, even just for practice. the bags under her eyes were more purple than dark.
it wasn't easy to move around with someone unconscious in his arms, but in his last few years coaching the foxes, he'd grown used to it. david put his striker down on the couch once he got there. the bleeding had started halfway into their trip but abby's reminder nagged at him. neil didn't like to undress in front of people.
he grabbed his bottle of scotch and waited.
it didn't take long enough, and it wasn't a sudden thing. neil's eyes moved under his eyelids, his breaths hitching like his body was remembering its injuries by the second. wymack took another swig and put the bottle down on the table.
