#Aftg fic

[joejhang]

my problem with raven!neil

this may be controversial but i've actually found that i don't rlly like raven!neil fics and aus. and here is my thesis. spoilers ahead continue at ur own risk.

crucial distinction here is that i don't actually dislike the concept of "raven!neil" as an individual character concept. i think it's actually very interesting to look into the sort of person neil would be if things had been slightly different. that is, obviously, the point of au fics and headcanons. my actual problem with raven!neil is mostly when fic writers and the fandom in general put him in context and into au fics and then the problems start arising. i'm being purposefully vague but i'm gonna go into all the problems i've come across when it comes to raven!neil.

first off, and this is something i've mentioned before, i think the fandom tends to strip abuse victims (particularly the characters who got out of the nest) of literally any agency or individuality. this happened with jean, when the whole fandom seemed to collectively uwufy him as if he isn't an adult (yes he's young yes he's barely an adult but he IS and i would argue thinking of him as a child still does him no good) with massive amounts of trauma. yes, jean has a learned fear of riko and tetsuji (and coaches by extension bc of the abuse from raven coaches) but he actually doesn't harbour much fear towards anyone else? he has come to expect violent retribution/punishment and does sort of have this problem where he bares his throat for the knife (when he puts the racquet in rhemann's hands and when he expects laila to hit him back) but other than that he actually doesn't demonstrate a lot of fear or panic when engaging with others.

i think the same would go for neil. the neil in current canon quite literally has no fears that do not trace back to his father. he doesn't fear riko, tetsuji, ichirou, andrew, drake or even lola and his father's men. where he does show fear is whenever his father gets involved. he isn't afraid of riko or anything riko has to say until riko brings nathan wesninski into it. the closest thing he comes to fear for anyone else is when he flinches from wymack but i'd call that survival instinct rather than like...fear. he doesn't have much of an emotional response, just an instinctual and physical one.

we obviously have no idea how neil's fear would develop if he had grown up at the nest. i'm not sure how much of a difference it would've made, honestly. obviously, those eight years on the run heavily reinforced his fear, so i don't really know where that fear would go if he was stagnant at the nest and confirmed (?) to be safe from his father. i think one of neil's key personality traits actually is his bravery and fearlessness, so i can't really see neil ever being truly afraid of tetsuji and riko. if you want to compare jean and neil in this aspect, all i'd say is: people have different responses for trauma. neil is not jean 2.0 or vice versa. even if they were put in virtually the same environment with the same treatment, they are still different people with different personalities. thus, they respond in different ways. just like jean and kevin responded in different ways, though their situations are implied to have been very different.

besides the point of fear and object of fear, i don't actually think being afraid of ur abusers means ur a baby that should be coddled and uwufied by the fandom. it's actually completely normal and human, so i actually have no clue why the fandom decided to do this with jean.

as someone in the tags of one of my previous posts so aptly said, autonomy ≠ agency. did kevin and jean have autonomy in the nest? no. but they did have agency. stripping abuse victims of agency and personality is actually so harmful and i think it's way too normalised in fandom culture. but that's a discussion for another day. we've all heard the comparison of the fear responses in relation to andrew (fight), neil (flight), kevin (freeze) and jean (fawn). i actually think these are mostly accurate, but it doesn't do any good to simplify it so completely.

neil having to remain sedentary rather than running away and never stopping or looking back is inevitably going to alter his responses to situations. neil's knee-jerk reaction to traumatic events or news in the og trilogy is literally: go on a run. this might still be the case in the nest, but i doubt it. i've said before that i think neil is the type of person to fight back. u could argue in response to that that jean was also fierce and angry when he got to the nest but developed something akin to learned helplessness where he simply stopped fighting back as a trauma response. but again: neil and jean are not the same person. they may have similar personalities, but everyone is different. you can't boil down all the victims of a particular abusive situation into the same person. this is stripping them of agency and individuality, once again. jean learned to stop fighting back and even ask for violent punishment for "wrongdoing" but i honestly don't think neil would. again, not because he's superior or inferior to jean, he's just a different person entirely. his time at evermore in trk was effectively a trial run for the time that riko intended neil to spend there after the year ended. we don't know exactly, but it's probably safe to assume that riko tried to cram as much of the abuse that kevin and jean received over several years into those two/three weeks. i mean, neil got fucking waterboarded and handcuffed to the bed for fuck's sake. i think at some point neil does say that he bowed his head and played at subservience, but when it really came down to riko and tetsuji trying to force neil to do something he adamantly did not want to do (sign the raven's contract) he literally just refused and didn't relent even under torture. jean even said he thought riko might've killed neil for it. neil was literally ready to die rather than bend to riko's will.

obviously, things would be different with kevin and jean in the equation. i can see neil reining himself in for their sake, but this brings me to another issue i have with raven!neil. and that is the strange need to turn neil into a protector figure. i.e. a human meat shield with a martyr complex for kevin and jean. every time i sense any iteration of this in any fic or hc i literally have to stop reading. it's just so...like random to me. neil has literally not been a "protector" in canon in fact he's almost always the one being "protected" (andrew's deal to literally protect neil from his father, wymack and abby's protectiveness, etc). yes, neil has protective instincts but so does literally every human being. neil is, in my opinion, no more or less protective than anyone else. compare this to say, andrew, who is known for his role as the "protector" (beating up the guys who hurt nicky, killing aaron's mother + getting rid of his addiction, making deals w kevin + neil). i've also written another extensive essay about why neil isn't and will never be the martyr or sacrificial lamb that some ppl seem to want him to be, so i won't go into it here. just please please please read the series back and realise: neil is quite literally the opposite of a martyr. i just have no idea where the idea of neil as a martyr or protective figure came in. especially in regards to kevin and jean.

it bears noting the first time neil meets riko with kevin there. at kathy's, neil doesn't hesitate to defend kevin and clock riko's shit. but note: defending ≠ protecting. and even if you do want to call that protecting, neil's way of "protecting" has never been in a martyring, self-sacrificial, human shield way. he is almost always on the offensive (clocking riko rather than directly defending kevin, punching riko, etc etc). neil is a natural instigator, and it would be such a disservice to him to erase that characteristic of his in raven!neil fics.

there are also several times in the series where neil's offensive actions have consequences that directly impact his loved ones and other people. like the first time neil insulted riko, a man literally died. the second time, drake attacked andrew. the third, neil took a trip to hell on earth and spent three weeks at evermore. the fourth, the foxes' and other athletes' cars got trashed. there's probably more that i'm not remembering, but you get the idea. neil feels guilt but never regret for this. he literally says verbatim that he isn't sorry for what he said about riko/the ravens even after the cars get wrecked and the others seem to blame him. so while i can see neil ducking his head and submitting to prevent jean/kevin getting hurt, it's also worth noting that if neil really cared that much about consequences, he probably would've stopped openly and loudly insulting riko in public after seth was murdered the first time. neil knew, or at least had a hunch, that it was his fault. did that stop him from doing it again? hell no. it can be both a character flaw and strength, but it's also just a fact. neil does not think that much about consequence. he sort of just does what he wants when he wants. it's a part of his personality. while there's no telling what about his personality would've changed at the nest, the fact that ten years living with a mob boss serial killer and eight years on the run from said mob boss serial killer didn't seem to kill that mouth of his, idk what would.

my final point is that when the raven!neil fic has andreil in it, it turns into andrew "saving" neil from his situation. words can't explain how much i hate this take on things. especially when it usually comes out of nowhere as well. bfr, andrew is not gonna risk his life to "save" some pretty redhead that comes his way without some pre-established connection. i also just think the idea of a "saviour" in a relationship is actually insane. as someone who is consistently pissed off and triggered by imbalance in relationships, this irritates me to no end. andreil obviously are protective and care for each other. that's a known fact. but i feel like w raven!neil fics they tend to exaggerate this and make it insanely one-sided. like andrew is some superhero type figure that needs to save damsel-in-distress neil who has a penchant for out-of-character martyrdom and is trapped in a horribly abusive situation. it sounds like i'm just hyperbolising no this is actually in all of the raven!neil fics that i've read. this exact dynamic. i hate it oh my god. it's not only entirely out of character i don't even think it works for them. like this should not be what their relationship is about or based off of. this last bit might just be a personal thing but i just hate hate hate it and it feels so wrong to force andreil into this kind of a dynamic. just leave my boys alone i'm BEGGING.

the aftg fandom does have this problem that should be addressed where they tend to coddle and uwufy abuse victims (particularly kevin, neil and jean in the context of the nest) and strip them down to easily digestible stereotypes. but this literally could not be further from the truth in canon. y'all forget how actually bitchy neil, jean and kevin are as individuals. kevin's fear of riko and tetsuji is bone-deep, but that never stopped him from picking fights with the foxes and hitting back whenever they had a problem w him (the only exception being andrew, but kevin already said, he lets andrew walk him like a dog out of sort-of thanks that andrew is letting him stay at psu). jean is also sort of an asshole (affectionate) back in the og trilogy and lowk in tsc too. he has a seemingly endless supply of insults for literally everyone and literally thinks about breaking jeremy's fingers for treating him too warily. he consistently gets annoyed when the trojans are too careful with him and remember when he literally threw jeremy to the floor during practice? yeah. seriously, stop boiling down these very traumatised individuals to their fear and history of abuse and erase any other part of their personality that makes them an interesting, well-rounded individual. it's so irritating to read and have to deal with the gross misinterpretation and mischaracterisation of these very well-loved characters. they deserve better, and these things also bely some very pertinent issues within fandom culture at large that should be talked about and critiqued more. jesus this is long anyway thank you for reading.

[jtl-fics]

Can I get four of those horse men, please?

1/1/25 WIP Wednesday (CLOSED) | Four Horsemen

“What, so Andrew’s is made with gay thread?” Aaron asks rolling his eyes as he grabs the one on the left.

“No,” Andrew rolls his eyes and takes his tuxedo out of his cousin’s hands. “My tuxedo is fitted to me, yours is fitted to you. It isn’t that complicated Aaron.” Andrew says.

“But we’re identi-” Aaron pauses and looks between the two of them.

Andrew and Aaron are identical, but they no longer live their lives identically. All the time that Aaron has spent working to become a doctor, pouring over medical textbooks, drowning himself in coffee to have the energy to go to class, and eating whatever he could get his hands on?

Andrew was at the gym, against his will.

Check out this week's options: HERE

[g0dhood]

chapter 2 of my art thief!neil and fbi agent!andrew AU fic is up :)

[aftg4palestine]

Adorable commission of Neil with plushies of Matt, Andrew, Jean and Kevin by @meatiors

If you'd like a piece of your own, donate to 🇵🇸 aid for an AFTG commission starting at $10 USD! All info in bio and pinned!

[little2nerdy]

reading tsc and jean’s interactions with neil being full of just wishing neil had stayed with him and been his forever partner makes me want to cry. also makes me want to read raven!neil fics for the first time? any suggestions would be much appreciated

[crazy-fangirl2524]

Apparently traumatised kids often fail to grow to normal height because all the energy goes to surviving and well no fucking wonder twinyards and Neil are so short

[its-parkerblake]

Nathan at Neil

[sunriseabram]

May I proudly present:

THE ULTIMATE MASTERLIST OF RECOMMENDED ANDREIL FICS

This website includes over 100 personal fic recommendations by over 100 authors, organised by rating and word count.

Every recommendation is one that I have personally read and enjoyed. This is, of course, not an exhaustive list and I am sure there are far more great fics I have yet to discover. However, this is a great starting point, especially for people new to the fandom!

If you don't find your favourite fic on this list, feel free to send me a message and I will check it out. Please reblog to spread to those who may need it!

(Authors: if you are not on this list, it doesn't make your writing bad. Either I've not come across it, or it personally wasn't for me. Keep writing! If you'd like your fic removed from this list, please send me a message.)

[weralika]

Hear me out... Andrew really treasures Neil for being the proof of his sanity. Since the foxes found out about their 'thing' Andrew doesn't really want to deny it, because it is the first time he offers others to see his 'human' part. He's showing his affection for Neil even when somebody's around, trying to say "Look, I'm human too. I care about someone who cares about me, I'm just like you all, can't you see?"

Neil is a solid proof that Andrew can be normal, he can have a boyfriend and kiss him behind closed doors, he can feel butterflies in his stomach, he can be cared for, just like others do.

Look, I'm sane because Neil wouldn't be beside me if I wasn't. We are just like others.

I feel that emotion too, it makes me softer sometimes, because that's what humans do: they change when loved. He shows off his stupid boyfriend to see that others respect them, they truly believe that they're an item, that they're capable of being one.

Though Nicky says that it's nothing more than 'hatefucking' and Andrew almost looses it. He's a monster once again, denying his feelings because monsters don't do emotions. Even if Neil cares about him, isn't he just a hound? A hound feeling the urge to protect but not be protected?

Is he really nothing beside his monstrous appearance, does he have nothing in common with those who love eachother? Is it just hatefuck?

Though, Neil asks for permission before kissing him, touches his waist when is asked, and how could Andrew be a monster when he melts under warm hands of his lover?

[billdenbrough]

TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF KEEPING A VAMPIRE AS A RESCUE

aftg · kevaaron · 10k, t. vampire au · multiple pov · kevin is doing his Best™ as a vampire for @kittkatattacks, as part of the @aftgexchange · fic graphic art by my beloved @naturecalls111

In a perfect world, someone else would be on Kevin duty today. “You are literally a vampire,” Aaron grouses. “You don’t need sleep. How the fuck are you so bad at getting here on time?” “I am immortal,” Kevin says patiently, as if what he’s about to say is reasonable instead of—undoubtedly—infuriating. “Time is irrelevant.” Yep, Aaron was right. Fucking infuriating. “I will stake you,” he grumbles, then wraps his hand around Kevin’s wrist. “Come on, we’re already late.”

It’s not every day that you go monster-hunting and end up with a pet vampire instead. Aaron really just wanted a dog, but he supposes this isn’t so bad.

(It’s not every day that a monster-hunter finds you, and instead of staking you, brings you home and teaches you how to do laundry. Kevin’s not sure what he wanted, but he’s glad he got this.)

read on ao3

[minyard-05]

Heaven And Hell Were Words To Me: Prologue

well. here it is. literal months of staying up late thinking about this concept, a million asks and pitches sent to my co-conspirators and here is the prologue for Heaven & Hell. enjoy <3

(the poll will have its true answer revealed once the chapter with that passage is posted, but people will probably figure it out anyway)

FORMING A TAG LIST so reply to this post if you'd like to be tagged in updates for this fic <3

[yourleftpinkytoe-blog]

You know what I’m a slut for?

Reaction fics… MY GOD DO I LOVE ME A GOOD OLE REACTION FIC.

Foxes reacting to Neil’s past? Sign me up! The foxes discovering that Andreil are more than just fuck buddies? Yes please. THE FOXES READING THE FUCKING BOOKS? Omg I actually start internally screaming with joy.

Idk what it is but those types of fics have me in a god damn chokehold.

Edit: I made a post with a couple of my favorite reaction fics

[jtl-fics]

I was so excited to see the first chapter of pretty boy on ao3! I would like to request some more :))

1/1/25 WIP Wednesday (CLOSED) | Pretty Boy

Andrew’s hand moves before he can second-guess it. He reaches for Neil’s ear, wanting to stop the bleeding he’s caused and Neil flinches from his hand. Andrew doesn’t only retract his hand, he takes a full step back from Neil in that moment.

Neil blinks at the sudden distance, “Andrew?”

He can hear his own heartbeat in his ears again, everything in him is primed to get out of this situation as fast as possible. He’s a danger to Neil and he needs to-

“Andrew. Don’t run away from me.” Neil stands up, hand no longer pinching his ear and Andrew can see the blood running down the side of his face again where there was already a trail.

Check out this week's options: HERE

[brye-writes]

I need to find more fics of Neil just being completely unhinged there’s something so cathartic about it.

Especially if the foxes look at him and go “oh man you are a little bit fucked up actually, we still love u tho”

[aftg4palestine]

Very beautiful finished commission made by the talented @denjiipng !!

If you would like a gorgeous commission such as this while also helping to support Palestinians in need, please request one of our incredibly talented artists for as little as $10 USD. All info in our pinned!📌

[achllsun]

some snippets from this kevaaron fanfic i just updated, in case you want to check it out 💌

drugs & candy | read here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61320199