odetojupiter

[odetojupiter]

thinking thoughts about how interesting it is that tetsuji manufactured a team so particular about ‘looking like a unit’ - training them to be in sync, making them wear only their team colours to banquets, making them move as one. and yet the existence of the ‘perfect court’ within his own team drives this same team to be ruthlessly individualistic. sure, he indoctrinates them through the ‘buddy system’, punishes two for the mistake of one, and sure they do display unity when they play - unity and violence, to be specific.

however it’s so clear that the raven’s playing is fuelled by their individual motivation to become part of the ‘us’ club (the perfect court) rather than the ‘them’ club (the rest of the team), to the point where they’re toxic, abusive, and harmful towards members of their own team in an attempt to fulfil that intense individual desire. sure they’re united by a desire for perfection, sure they all want to win and to defend their reigning champion title, but the dichotomy between tetsuji’s want for a ‘united front’ and his creation of a ‘better team within the best team’ is so so interesting.

i know it’s a cash grab, a play for more fame, a marketing strategy and a sports gimmick to have a select few players on your team physically marked as ‘the best in the country’, however the fact that the other players on the team have the perfect court dangled above their heads the whole time - knowing that the perfect court has nothing to do with the buddy system, since jean’s ‘buddy’ was not perfect court - completely undermines everything tetsuji tried to do to instil the ‘hive mind’ identity into all of the ravens.

because ravens don’t have friends, and they don’t have relationships with each other - both kevin, jean and even thea to extent tell us that much. the buddy system teaches them to be afraid when they’re alone more than it teaches them to work well together. jean and kevin both struggle severely with being left alone - to the point where both refuse to, as much as they can. and you can assume it’s the same for the rest of the ravens, but ravens don’t have friends. they aren’t friends with the people they’re afraid to be without. their unity on the court comes more from their individual need to be better than everyone else on the team and avoid beatings than anything else. in fact, i’m certain the ‘buddy system’ would cause more resentment than unity between pairs, because if one person were to make a lot of mistakes that their ‘buddy’ would then be punished for, the buddy surely won’t be thanking them for it.

and i think this is why kevin struggles to integrate into the foxes as much as he does. it’s different for jean of course, because the trojan’s are a very different team to the foxes, but kevin joined the foxes when the team was especially divided. and he’s used to a team being divided, he’s used to a team full of individuals that hate each other. what he isn’t used to is those individuals not being motivated through both fear and an instilled need to be the best. the foxes are downtrodden, half of them have given up already and barely try, the other half have personal life struggles that make it difficult to be motivated by anything other than rage. and kevin doesn’t know how to handle that. he doesn’t know how to unite a team through anything other than the need to be perfect. but the foxes don’t care about that because of what they’ve all been through.

perfect doesn’t exist to them. friends don’t exist to kevin. that’s why it’s so hard for him (and them). so yeah, kevin, forced to be perfect and naturally an amazing player, of course, is the better player compared to neil. but neil was 100% the better choice for captain over kevin because neil wasn’t raised in the nest like kevin was. where the ravens work well together out of fear, and the individualistic need to be the best, neil has a much better understanding of how important teamwork is. and he’s willing to do whatever possible to make sure the team can work well together. kevin isn’t able to do that because he’s been surrounded by ravens for so long that he can’t comprehend a different outlook on playing exy: he doesn’t understand why you should need to get along with your teammates to succeed because the ravens don’t get along with their teammates.

i probably have more to say on this and i lost my original train of thought but here we are. i guess this turned into a defence of neil being chosen as captain, so i’ll just add: i don’t think kevin would actually want to be captain. maybe as a result of his upbringing, maybe it’s something intrinsic to him, i guess we’ll never know, but kevin seems much more preoccupied with being the best he can be than he is with making sure the team can work cohesively. and that’s what being a captain is about - it’s not about the better player, it’s about who can kick the team into shape. yeah this got way off track and i have more to say about how tetsuji’s whole operation was essentially him shooting himself in the foot the whole time, but i’ll just chat that shit in the tags cause this is longer than intended

[odetojupiter]

im sorry but i HATE kandreil. i dont have any good reason for it i just really dont like it. i dont vibe with it. im kinda scared that im going to get accused of not having any reading comprehension skills or smth because "its basically canon that andrew liked kevin" and like i know that. i promise you i know that. but have you considered that i simply dont want that so in my mind that didnt happen. have you considered that everyone can interpret art as they want and im choosing to interpret it as andrew NOT being into kevin ever? yeah sure its canon but its not MY canon. nuh-uh

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chose a specific master’s course that would let me choose both poetry and prose modules. submitted a poetry portfolio, got accepted. great. just been emailed by them saying they’ve ‘updated the way the course is run’ and it turns out, they’ve changed it so ‘related modules’ are grouped together into strands, and you can choose only one strand. can’t take modules from other strands but you can choose modules within that strand. so i’m now paying for a course that won’t let me do the thing that i literally chose this course for, since prose and poetry are separate strands. and it’s too late to apply anywhere else since most places have closed their applications, and i’ve already sorted accommodation and paid deposits and everything for september. i just genuinely don’t understand why you would alter the course AFTER receiving all the applications. do they not understand that everyone who applied applied based on the previous course model? i get it’s not the end of the world but god is it frustrating.

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THIS SCENE KAJSJSJSJSNE

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I love Andrew to death but writing his pov will be the death of me. I feel like it never comes out right.

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scrolling through pinterest and i saw this. day ruined :(

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I'm annoyed when people only say Neil's stalker binder only consists of Kevin when Nora says it was a Riko & Kevin shrine.

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ughhhhhhhh this summer is gonna be so fucking rough.

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The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.

[odetojupiter]

Kevin Day runs the Palmetto State Foxes like Sue Sylvester runs the Cheerios

[odetojupiter]

every day is a new opportunity to learn the difference between colons and semi-colons. i, however, maintain the tried-and-tested practice of googling it every time i use one

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the audacity of neil to say ‘they could have blinded you’ to andrew when he himself had just had the skin right under his eye burned with a dashboard lighter. baby they could’ve blinded YOU fgs

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hey uh new type of ao3 spam comment just dropped. (I know it's spam because the fic they left this comment on . doesn't have chapters. lmfao). Report this kinda comment as spam and don't take it personally it is literally recycled bullshit

[odetojupiter]

the tragedy of neil enduring evermore thinking that he’s keeping andrew safe while andrew is there thinking his family is safe just to get to the realization they both failed in the end

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This part-

They ruined me forever

I still haven't finished the third book but I needed to draw that scene

[odetojupiter]

officially 6 years since i read aftg for the first time

[odetojupiter]

'Don't look at me like that.'