#again i'm so sorry i spent half of this going on about riko

[afurtivecake]

Hello! 10, 12, 13 and 16 for the aftg ask game 🌼

Oh hello! Thank you for indulging me!

Oh shit, i genuinely panicked for a moment there because i forgot which ask game and where i could find the questions.

(now that i've had a look at the questions...ah shit, i'm going to spend it talking about riko, aren't i? ah, well fuck.)

10. A villain you think is fucking hot.

i'm pretty ace about hotness in general so i guess i'll just have to take jeremy's word for it that ichirou is hot. (riko's my favourite villain but more because i think he's kind of pathetic, and i like that in a character :) )

12. Favourite narrative foil

damn these questions are not pulling any punches

yeah it's gotta be neil and riko. there's a lot said about neil and jean and they are really interesting, but. the thing that gets me whenever i consider neil and riko is that they were both born into families that expected them to grow into the violence that defines their families. they're so alike in a lot of ways. in fact, up until that moment with neil's tryout, him and riko were almost neck to neck with their whole traumatic backgrounds and their obsession with exy. but then from that point onwards, their paths diverge. neil's mother's love for him saves him from the moriyama's clutches and from going down the path of cruelty and violence that riko goes down.

neil and riko both have violent, explosive tempers, but neil takes his anger out on people stronger and more powerful than he is while riko directs that anger towards the most helpless people within reach. while neil chooses to cut people down with biting words, riko take the literal, physical route. it's very much a reflection of their upbringings, post-tryout. mary wasn't a gentle, loving mother, but it was clearly important to her that she keep neil away from using physical violence. as a result, neil talks his way through situations and doesn't really know how to fight or wield weapons beyond maybe basic self-defense. riko, on the other hand, grew up in an environment where words mean nothing and action everything.

riko taking pleasure in hurting people who can't fight back vs neil taking pleasure in seeing people suffer too, but only if he thinks they deserved it.

riko besting people who don't have a chance so that he feels powerful vs neil liking the rush of escaping situations where he barely had a chance and beating powerful people

neil, who has long since accepted that he is nothing and nobody vs riko, who is desperately trying to prove that he isn't nothing and nobody

neil, who was given the freedom to walk into this whole exy mafia mess with his eyes open, who sees exy and the moriyamas as a bright future vs riko who's never known freedom from exy or the moriyamas, whose future with those things was always nothing but black

also, i'm obsessed with the fact that neil is the striker and on-court partner that kevin chose while riko was the partner that he was assigned. riko coming second-best to neil in kevin's regard? that must have stung a lot.

13. Favourite narrative symbolism

chess pieces, if that counts, (i'm going to be a little loose with the definition of symbolism here because i've always struggled to think in terms of symbols) or at least kevin's queen tattoo. it just completely re-contextualized riko, kevin and their whole Perfect Court thing for me. riko really never was king in the sense of a supreme ruler though he tried to act like it; he was a chess king. he had very limited freedom, he relied on the strength of others around him and he was the key thing propping the whole game up. riko was king but he was still another chess piece being moved around by tetsuji and the moriyamas, same as kevin or jean. his game falls apart without kevin and jean (the foxes didn't win that match because they were better than the ravens) and the whole ravens experiment falls apart without riko, their chess king. kevin's tattoo replaces riko's mark of ownership (the '2') with something that is way more truthful. it marks him as a moriyama asset, a chess piece with a limited freedom, but a piece with the most freedom on the board.

16. How did you get here? How did you discover AFTG

HERE here? well, i was just minding my own business, reading sports fiction and queer romance novels late in the month of march, when i came across aftg in the list of books under the lgbtqia+ category at my library. i borrowed it thinking, well, it does seem to fit my very loose genre criteria. little did i know, i would finish the three books in three days. then i spent a week lost in a haze of "what the fuck did i just read?" and in vehement denial that i've been ensnared by these books in any way. then i lost that battle with myself and accepted that ok, i'm insane about this series. then i suddenly found out that a fourth book was coming out in like a week. then i really went insane about this series.

i had so many thoughts about these books that could not fit into my usual texts to my friends (who basically get in-depth reviews and analyses of everything i read) and so i had to put them on tumblr instead. it was for the greater good! i had to spare them my endless thoughts!