exy-issexy

[exy-issexy]

How Six of Crows taught me that it was okay to not always feel fine

Since today is World Mental Health Day, I wanted to address a side of Six of Crows that has always been quite an important aspect to me.  

Mental illness and awareness is a huge topic in today’s society, and right of the top of my head, I can think of some brilliant YA novels that talk about the subjects; The Perks of Being a Wallflower, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Turtles all the Way Down, and so on. The list is endless. But there seems to be a distinct lack of YA fantasy books that deal with mental health topics. I did a google search, and sure, you could argue that Harry Potter suffers from PTSD (controversial topic which I’m not going to express my opinion right here), or that Frodo Baggins suffers from depression (not a YA book, but you get the point), but the actual amount of YA fantasy novels where we can actually all agree that the protagonist or a side character suffer from a mental illness is incredibly small. Yes, it does exist, and a quick shoutout to all the fantasy authors who do write about mental health issues. I’m not gonna name any out of fear for forgetting any, but feel free to reblog this with any fantasy YA mental health awareness books you’d recommend (my personal favourite apart from SoC would probably be the Raven Cycle).

But honestly, Leigh Bardugo shows us that it is very much possible. A couple of her protagonists suffer from actual mental illnesses, others are insecure, or non-conforming in some way. Their issues are smoothly integrated into the story and help advance the plot by creating problems and secrets. It makes the characters incredibly interesting and round. It creates the least-cliché romantic side-plots I’ve ever read in a YA novel. And you know what? I think we, as readers, can learn something from every single one of the Crows.

Kaz Brekker teaches us that mental illnesses shouldn’t stop us from achieving our dreams. He teaches that you can not be able to touch anyone but still be powerful. That a horrible childhood doesn’t have to drag us down. Kaz teaches us how to be determined.

Inej Ghafa teaches us that faith can get us anywhere. She teaches us how to stand up to the people we’re afraid of, and that things that have happened to us in the past don’t have to define us. Inej teaches us how to be strong.

Jesper Fahey teaches us that it’s sometimes okay to go off the rails. That people make mistakes (and sometimes make a lot of them). Jesper teaches us how to be human.

Wylan van Eck teaches us that we are not our parents. He teaches us that we have the right to be our own people and don’t have to follow in anybody’s footsteps if we don’t want to. He teaches us to not listen to mockeries and insults. Wylan teaches us how to be independent.

Like Jesper, Nina teaches us that sometimes, we make terrible mistakes. she teaches us how to make them right. But she also teaches us to not be ashamed of who we are, even if we are different or special, and that our body weight does not define us. Nina teaches us to be proud.

And Matthias. Matthias Helvar teaches us that the way we we were raised doesn’t define us. You don’t have to follow the morals and the values and the hatred that may have been burned into your head. He shows us that people have the ability to change. They have the ability to forgive and be forgiven. He shows us that sometimes it’s okay to not know whether you’re doing the right thing. That sometimes, humans lose their way and have to find it again. Matthias teaches us how to develop.

Determination, strength, humanity, independence, pride, development. You know what? Those are some values I can get behind. And these six anti-heroic criminals teach us so much more. Of course, they teach us that it’s okay to not be heterosexual. They teach us that love isn’t always easy. That sometimes our pasts catch up with us. That we can’t always do what we want. But they also teach us that there are always people out there for us. A family. Friends. People who love us.

And I guess I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you to Leigh Bardugo, for creating such wonderfully human characters that I cried for and smiled for even though the real world was trying to drag me down. Thank you for creating characters who helped me understand that it’s okay not to feel fine.

And I also wanted to say, to everybody who is reading this horribly long monologue of mine (thanks for that, by the way), that you’re an amazing individual and you too can be a total badass like our favourite criminals if you put your mind to it. Stay safe, folks. And stay strong.

Happy World Mental Health Day.

[exy-issexy]

So proud of my mother for doing her own research after I sent her that meme. A sign she hung in her car window.

[exy-issexy]

Actors are by nature volatile—alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster.

IF WE WERE VILLIANS BY M. L. RIO

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edits from a to z : as requested by @ourravenboys

       i for: inej ghafa, the wraith.

We meet fear. We greet the unexpected visitor and listen to what he has to say. When fear arrives, something is about to happen.

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edits from a to z : as requested by @pipquintana

t for: thalia grace, the thunder trouble.

If I'd known what was coming, I would've called in sick. I could've avoided an army of demons, a fight with a Titan, and a trick that almost got my friends and me cast into eternal darkness.

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little things you may have forgotten about aristotle and dante

ari hates cokes

dante said that only good looking models get paid and ari got embarrassed asdfghjkl

the first thing that ari remembers after the surgery is dante

ari doesn’t know Any beatles songs

ari’s long hair and how he likes it (because dante has long hair)

Keep reading

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I never send asks but I wanted to say that autistic Kevin is also a favorite hc of mine. Would it be possible to get some of your own thoughts/ideas about it? Love all of your posts!!

yes !! absolutely i take any chance to talk about my hcs !! there’s not enough autistic kevin content, and i’m so glad u like my other content too !!

he was never diagnosed in the nest; he had trouble understanding certain cues and sometimes it felt like everyone expected him to know how to communicate a certain way he didn’t know how to, but PR training was engrained into him just as much as the correct grip on an exy stick was, so he tends to fall back on that

it doesn’t really concern him bc he’s not interested in talking to people and why should it matter ?? he only really needs to be good at exy

he always assumed that his special interest in exy and such was just a raven thing

exy was an easy special interest to have bc in the nest talking about exy was really the only type of talking encouraged

his special interest in history is where he kinda... faltered

at its core it seemed similar to his interest in exy but it wasn’t encouraged the same way exy was so he treats it a bit differently

he does infodump, but only to himself about history while he was in the nest; whenever he would read an article that was really interesting and made him kinda !! he would lock himself in his room, alone, and pace while talking to himself for a few hours to get it all out

the first time he infodumps at psu was about the trojans after a really great match they played; it was only andrew, nicky, and aaron in their dorm at the time

he’s kinda hesitant to really infodump about exy bc at first all of his teammates see him only as a stuck up exy obsessed bitch, and while it’s true somewhat, it definitely doesn’t encourage any of them to listen to him talk even more about exy

he gets more comfortable with infodumping to wymack first, telling him about a history project and a certain move jeremy knox pulled off the really should’ve been impossible and slowly but surely he gets comfortable with infodumping on the other foxes, one by one

Routine. he is Very into routine and coming up with a new one after leaving the nest was hell for him and everyone around him; this on top of his hand pushed him to shutdown for a while

whenever he has a meltdown kevin goes nonverbal and Cannot be touched; andrew and eventually wymack and neil are the only people he’ll let be around him while he’s like this. talking feels impossible for him and even the thought of someone touching him can make him writhe

this pertains more to some of my hcs about his anxiety, but whenever he’s overwhelmed he re-strings the mesh of his exy racquet over and over again until his mind quiets down and he stops full-body shaking

is very meh about food. most of his eating habits come from the nest but he Does Not Like certain textures

cooked carrots? mashed potatoes? cooked peas? if it is warm and mushy he will not eat it

he was “trained out of” most of his stims at the nest but as he gets more comfortable at psu he slowly lets himself stim around his teammates

it’s mostly small stuff; he rocks gently, likes to play with things in his hands to keep them moving, doesn’t really like to sit still. snaps his fingers sometimes when he’s aggravated. pulls on the mesh of his racquet, twists his fingers in the strings. has caught himself chewing on his shirt neck/sweatshirt strings on multiple occasions; andrew noticed, because he notices everything, but he doesn’t object when kevin steals his sweatshirts and ultimately chews on the strings

andrew once walked in on kevin laying on the dorm floor with a mountain of blankets on top of him and all kevin said was “good pressure” and gave andrew a thumbs up

andrew gets him a weighted blanket after that

kevin loves the blanket but nothing beats neil (or even occasionally matt or nicky in their last few years at psu when he’s more comfortable around the rest of the team) laying flat on top of him; he blushed Very Hard the first few times he asked them to do it (after the first time neil accidentally fell asleep on him and kevin realized how good the weight was) but eventually he became comfortable asking

is Bad at reading the room/other peoples emotions; wymack is Always confusing him even if he doesn’t try to, wymack is just... Trying His Best; andrew is normally pretty straightforward and tells it how it is so kevin takes solace in that. whenever people have been Too Much and he just feels frustrated and confused bc people were getting frustrated at him for not understanding even though they were the ones being confusing he either locks himself in the dorm room alone or finds andrew and just sits with him until he calms down

when kevin gets too caught up in his own head or is struggling with understanding a certain situation he goes to neil bc neil is brutally honest and will repeat the same thing as many times as it takes to stick without getting frustrated with kevin

betsy was the one to diagnose him; he didn’t take it badly, he did his own research and his biggest reaction was along the lines of relief and “oh that makes a lot of sense”; he likes knowing he isn’t the only one who feels similar to how he feels. in his pro years he makes sure it’s known that he’s autistic bc he knows it helps other neurodivergent kids in the world to have someone they can relate to. it’s also a big fuck you to all the commentators and press who doubted him only after he made it known that he was autistic; he’s very petty about it and likes to remind people that, yes, you can be the best striker in all of exy history and be autistic. it’s not that hard to understand.

okay !!!! these are just some of my autistic!kevin hcs !! i feel like this hc does Not get enough content :,) pls pls pls always feel free to chat with me about autistic kevin or really any aftg hcs !!!

[exy-issexy]

                                             t  h  e    p  a  l  m  e  t  t  o    f  o  x  e  s

                                   n e i l  •  a n d r e w  •  k e v i n  •  a a r o n  •  n i c k y                                       m a t t  •  d a n  •  a l l i s o n  •  r e n e e  •  s e t h

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>:(

Here are some cursed thoughts I had that @exy-issexy had to suffer:

Andrew with a handlebar mustache

Andrew as a biker with a handlebar mustsche

Andrew wearing a leather vest with spikes

All of this plus a mullet

This hurts to think about

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“I hate you,” Andrew said casually. He took a last long drag from his cigarette and flicked it off the roof. “You were supposed to be a side effect of the drugs.” “I’m not a hallucination,” Neil said, nonplussed.

remember to apply for @exysource !

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tonight i offer you some kevin + eli (cute boy from history class) headcanons to hold you over while i work up the motivation to write full sentences on ao3. tomorrow? who knows (i sure don’t)

when eli finds out kevin plays exy he simply has no idea what that means

“so you… throw a ball down a field and catch it? and then throw it into a goal to win? that’s it?”

kevin: *boiling with rage*

but what he lacks in exy knowledge he makes up for in random facts about the french revolution

you never know when he’s gonna throw one out there

kevin: *one earbud in listening to a sports podcast while they’re studying at the library*

eli: *scribbling down completely unrelated notes* did you know that when the revolutionaries stormed the bastille, they were more interested in finding gunpowder than prisoners? that’s crazy.

kevin: *nods* crazy.

eli: *proceeds to explain the storming of the bastille from memory*

he does a bunch of research on exy one night to learn the rules before the foxes first home game bc kevin sort of suggested in his own subtle way that he come watch them play 

(aka nicky told him to invite eli after he saw kevin smiling just a little bit at his phone while texting him abt the history reading in the locker room)

eli somehow misses the fact that kevin’s mom is a literal co-creator of the fucking sport

after all that research, he still ends up letting kevin explain every tiny detail to him bc he loves listening to him talk

especially when he has that lil glimmer in his eye and that nostalgic smile on his face while talking about how exy was created

kevin keeps pausing to make sure eli’s following along bc he isn’t used to being able to talk so freely 

at the first game, eli sits in the student section right behind the cheerleaders

nicky almost bruises kevin’s arm bc he can’t stop poking him and whisper-shouting “he’s heeere! he really came!”

kevin, exasperated, “of course he came, i invited him.”

eli has no idea where to look until kevin seemlessly scores the first goal and bumps raquets with aaron

after that, he doesn’t take his eyes off of him until the foxes walk off the court

[exy-issexy]

hi wanna make a post about andreil and the importance of wordplay and mayhaps analyze it a little because it would make my day and also perhaps make yours and also because god damn the middle school banter plus the importance of wordplay is so funny

hi there!

i’d really love to write such a post but i’m afraid i’d have to re-read aftg to make it good. though a couple of months ago i posted this little bit about my favorite wordplay andrew has ever made so maybe that’ll be some consolation haha

https://bloody-wonder.tumblr.com/post/615571886805565440/so-as-we-all-know-andrew-is-definitely-the-king

but if when i read aftg again you may rest assured i’ll make a giant post overanalyzing each andreil dialogue bcs i love them so goddamn much. i generally think that the best way to express a character’s personality is via a dialogue and aftg just  d e l i v e r e d  in that regard. 

but THE BANTER........ idk i can’t even choose one favorite andreil dialogue but the one in tfc where neil lets andrew & co know that he cracked his little game will always have a special place in my heart.  

1) it sets up the antagonism, the back-and-forth they will have in the books perfectly

2) neil can’t pretend to lie low for the life of him, he’s just naturally antagonistic, he wouldn’t let himself be pushed for a second. he just had to assert his dominance on andrew’s turf, he’s like wow you think you’re so cool guess what i’m not afraid of you one bit, in fact i know things about you and i won’t hesitate bitch

and oh my does andrew dig it

3) because it’s not that neil catches andrew’s attention by being observant enough to tell between him and aaron or informed enough to know about his drugs situation - it’s that neil comes up with a perfect rebuff (figure it out for yourself - i did) AND throws andrew’s own words back at him - which shows not only that he still remembered them (after what? a month?), but that he cared enough to listen to what andrew said in the first place.

bcs the way i see it, even the well-meaning people in andrew’s life generally don’t care for what he says: they either simply don’t understand his convoluted way of speaking or they dismiss what he says as manic blabbering, oblivious to the grains of sense that are hidden beneath the sarcasm. i bet andrew was going through life spurting out stuff just bcs why not nobody understands or cares either way, so when he meets a person who actually paid attention to what he said despite having no good reason to do so bcs andrew just hit him with a racquet as a way of introducing himself - andrew must have felt... seen? interested? gratified? idk but he certainly felt things 

4) mainly andrew must have subconsciously known in that very moment that he has met his equal who will not only be unafraid to talk back at him and be able to keep up with their verbal showdowns - but who also will be able to win them like almost the entire time.

and isn’t that interesting

tl;dr andrew had no chance, neil was engineered by aphrodite just for him

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creators see your reblogs. creators read the nice tags you type in when you love their work. creators beam when you ask to be added to the tag list, or tagged in their edits and writings. creators see your comments saying how beautiful their content is. creators smile when you send an ask telling them how much you like their work. creators appreciate interaction with their content and love you for it, really. so if you like something, reblog it, say how much you love it in the tags, reply to it with a nice message. you’ll make someone’s day.

[exy-issexy]

I’m just going to leave this here…

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i’ve seen a lot of posts for pride month saying that stonewall was the birth of lgbtq+ rights and that we owe everything to trans women of color. and while that is absolutley correct for american lgbtq+ history, i just want to remind americans that your history is not everyone else’s history and you should be careful with how american centralized your pride month posts are

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I’m a cis-gender man which basically means that, when I was born, the doctor went “It’s a boy!” and when I was old enough to understand I agreed with him.

The thing is, I don’t know why I feel like a man.  I was teased and bullied for it a lot when I was little.  I’ve never had stereotypically American male interests.  I never cared about sports or cars or guns.  I was more interested in music and cooking and the arts.  I’ve always been emotionally in tune and sensitive, even when I did my best to suppress my emotions to survive a childhood of abuse from other children.

It’s not physical either.  I don’t feel like a man because I have a penis or a beard.  If you put my brain in a robot body or any other body, my essence would still feel male (I assume).  I literally can’t imagine what being any other gender would feel like, since I feel so acutely male.

I think that’s why the concept of being transgender always made sense to me.  I’m a man.  I don’t have any bloody clue why I feel like a man, but I don’t feel that it’s tied to my body or my interests or the way that I’ve been treated.  I feel like a man because of something beyond that.  Something ephemeral.  So, why couldn’t others feel the same?  Why couldn’t a person who’s been misidentified as a girl feel like a boy for the exact same nebulous reasons that I do?

And, since gender really doesn’t make any sense to me anyway, why couldn’t there also be people who feel as if they don’t have one?  Or who flow across genders like a ship on a map?

Are there people out there whose sense of their own gender is inseparable from their physical form?  If you put those people into robot bodies or, simply, other physically different bodies, would their gender identity also swap?  If so, why?  Are they actually more lost in their gender identity than I am and they need to hone in on the physical in order to anchor themselves?

Why do people feel like they are the gender that they are?

[exy-issexy]

Every time I read a fic where Nicky just inexplicably ~understands~ Andrew or is the one to explain Andrew’s actions *TO* Neil, my suspension of disbelief automatically snaps. I get that people want to like Nicky and therefore make their versions of him more palatable for themselves, but it’s annoying. That’s not who he is. He doesn’t make any more of an effort to understand Andrew than anyone else and he doesn’t have an inate knack for it either, which some fics would have me believe

the all consuming, uncritical, absolutely blind love for nicky in the fandom is one of my biggest pet peeves. welcome to another rant.

i remember when i read aftg for the first time and dived into the tumblr fandom i very much expected to see posts calling him out at for what he did during their first trip to eden’s bcs isn’t it the bread and butter of tumblr discourse - taking one problematic thing a character did and cancelling them for it forever. however i was surprised to find not a single such post. seriously i’ve been in the fandom for almost a year now and i have been lurking on the old blogs and following the new ones and i have yet to see such a post. here’s the one i wrote back then

https://bloody-wonder.tumblr.com/post/189107928398/so-nicky-discourse

there i mostly talk about the eden’s incident but the point i tried (and probably failed) to get across was not that what he did is Problematic but rather that why he did it is. bcs like with roland it’s self-evident that nicky did a bad thing and it’s also framed as such by the narrative. but taken out of context this single incident can be easily dismissed as a mistake commited by a young inebriated person which they realized was a mistake and apologized for. the fandom is certainly ready to dismiss it and to accept nicky’s apology to neil. fair enough. in fact it would be an example of some very mature thinking on the part of the fandom - if the context of nicky’s behavior and personality wasn’t discarded along the way.

and the context is this: nicky has very rigid and one-sided views about what’s normal and what’s not and he acts accordingly. he thinks it’s normal to feel attraction like he does and to strive for a romantic relationship - hence the “neil you have to date someone or you’ll die unhappy” pep talk. he thinks it’s normal to casually kiss a guy he likes at a club despite him being very obviously uninterested. he thinks it’s normal to comfort people by touching them, so he will do it to andrew although it’s common knowledge that andrew doesn’t like to be touched. when andrew lashes out at him for it - it must mean andrew’s not normal bcs “normal” people like to be touched. andrew doesn’t behave like a “normal” person would, ergo andrew’s crazy. how do we “fix” andrew? how do we make him “normal” again? apparently by forcing “normal” things and behaviors upon him until he’s magically healed by the abundance of care and hugs.

instead of trying to understand andrew and connect with him “from below”, he’s dead set on imposing “normalcy” on him “from above”. like i said in my old post, he doesn’t even seem to give andrew credit for defending him against those jerks and winding up on the pills bcs of it. nicky just doesn’t get andrew to the point of calling him soulles, but seems to be under the illusion that he does everything in his power to understand him. well, on second thought, is it in his power though? i had some hope that after nicky finds out about the nature of andrew’s trauma, he’ll realize some things and his treatment of andrew will change. that didn’t happen as far as i remember. when the gang returns from the easthaven with andrew, nicky’s like “andrew won’t you ask neil why he’s all beaten up? well that’s just rude”. in fact, now i’m remembering that nicky and aaron were telling everybody that andrew’s much worse when sober but?? what’s worse about him? that he isn’t smiling at them? what a scary behavior indeed. or that he isn’t chatting with them? well it’s their problem that they aren’t as stellar conversationalists as neil. i digress. what i’m getting at is that it may very much be not in nicky’s power to understand andrew bcs they are very differend people and come from different circumstances. i’m not saying that you can’t write a plausible arc where nicky learns to communicate with andrew but most people don’t even try. as far as i understand nicky is seen as nothing but kind and if sometimes he makes mistakes, well, they don’t count bcs his intentions are good. but there’s a road paved with good intentions. you know where it leads.

that’s the insidious thing about nicky, that’s why i think he’s one of the most well-crafted morally grey characters and why he fills me with rage - the problematic side of him is hidden beneath the good intentions, the kindness, the jokes, all the other little things that make him nice and relatable, that the fandoms tend to latch on to. we have no problem engaging with characters like andrew critically, it’s easy for us to separate his good sides from his flaws bcs he’s upfront about it. we sure love andrew but we don’t romanticize his bad boy attitude and his knives bcs the media shift in recent years has taught us that “bad” boys tend to be Problematic and you have to watch out. andrew is hard to swallow so you swallow only if you absolutely want to, but nicky is so palatable you don’t even have to drink anything to wash him down, all the while oblivious to what you just swallowed. the “good” boys you have to be critical of as well.

sorry, this metaphor was weird.

lastly, we have to address the elephant in the room - nicky’s gay as the fourth of july. he’s the uwu gay cinnamon roll that has to be protected at all costs. we’re still at a point where, despite gradually getting more and more media rep, gay people feel like the characters they’re represented by have to be paragons of virtue lest the general public think that all gays are like this one imperfect character. so i can see how the aftg fans would want to overlook all nicky’s flaws because they like him and relate to him so much. i can also see how, if he were straight but otherwise retained the uuh... lets say “sexually enthusiastic” facet of his canon personality, he’d probably be burned at a stake by now. there’s this wonderful trend where people rehabilitate seth and aaron by treating them as complex characters. i can only hope that the same thing will happen to nicky some time soon.

so yeah, i 100% agree with all you said. nicky doesn’t understand andrew and the fics where he magically does are ooc. or, you know, those where nicky explains demisexuality to neil. don’t. make. me. laugh. nicky who has forced himself on neil and when that ended in a disaster tried to allo-splain the joys of a romantic relationship to him? nicky, who, upon seeing that neil doesn’t seem to be interested in girls, thought that the only possible conclusion must be that neil’s gay? all of this after neil explicitly told him that he doesn’t “swing”. i’m sorry, writers who hc nicky as some kind of wisened by life sexuality mentor, but he doesn’t know a thing about the ace spectrum.

tl;dr nicky really needs to do some self-reflection but, since he isn’t a real person but a fictional character, the readers need to reflect upon his canon behavior instead, before declaring him to be the kindest, most perceptive and tolerant person in existence.