#and btw i really really appreciate that you're still sending me aftg asks💜

[bloody-wonder]

ik I'm probably the only person that still sends u asks about aftg, but did u read the new short stories? any thoughts?

thank you for the ask and sorry that it took me ages to reply! i just wanted to reread aftg before checking out the new extra chapters (for maximum impact) so i was waiting for the right mood to do the whole thing and now it finally happened. reread the og trilogy and the extra content over the last couple of weeks and i gotta say - absolutely amazing, no notes, still love this story to bits, maybe even more than before😌🥍

i liked the new chapters a lot too! so turns out i still like nora's writing, it's just that i don't care about jean & the trojans oops😬 well maybe that's gonna change after i finally read the golden raven🤷‍♀️

funny moments:

"are you and neil not getting along? - bane of my existence." hehehe😁 "my hands are full with too many idiots" yes yes andrew we all know how much you hate your friends who you've invested so much time in keeping deals with😏

"now that you're doomed to bounce off the walls all night, any plans? - chaos and mayhem." 😂😂😂 lmao the implication that betsy got andrew into musicals - i love it. there is no other explanation for how andrew knows who jean valjean is in the late 2000s, right? it's before the movie adaptation came out and there's no way andrew read the book.

"he could waste his time being angry or he could go the tried and true minyard route of infuriating everyone else around him" haha aaron's chapter starting with him smirking about how he's gonna manipulate and gaslight his brother into breaking their deal. okay machiavelli, we remember now you're a minyard too. "Hey Bee!" ksjdvkjsd he's like i'm gonna ruin this man's whole career he won't even know what hit him😂

"exy this, exy that, get a fucking hobby already. oh, but i guess he did?" if the twinyards didn't have Issues they could've bonded over hating neil's exy obsession big time. also this is peak sibling teasing over crushes in front of an audience, andrew was probably so Embarrassed🙈 "i like neil's promise ring, by the way. matching set. very cute." GO AWAY AARON🙈🙈🙈 "neil is not our family, not with the way you look at him" no come back tell me more👀

"aaron was willing to be an ass about it" and what a burden lol "he tried to punch me out. - you bring out that urge in people." 😂😂😂 "i told her you were never going to develop a personality of your own. she held out hope for you regardless. she has a thing for lost causes." siblings banter👏 siblings banter👏 siblings banter👏

"i liked him more when he wasn't speaking to me, bee" 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

"neil, then? :) - tick tock, bee. goodbye." OMG they are literally ganging up on this poor man!! the worst day andrew has had since roland accidentally threw him under the bus that one time😂

"you will regret it. - says the man dating a MAFIOSO. - i'm not dating him. - LIAR😃" sjhvskvbksdj this is everything lmao. surreal that they just spent so much time discussing the danger katelyn may or may not pose to aaron considering who andrew is not-dating. love that we have this on page instance of neil being called a mafioso hehe😅 and technically it's true that one can't describe what neil and andrew have by the unassuming word 'dating' but aaron won't let semantics get in the way of MAKING FUN OF HIS BROTHER FOR HAVING A CRUSH🙌🙌🙌

emotional moments:

"coaches have no honor. your word is enough. just yours." 😭 as a big fan of "and my father comes to all of my games" i gotta say - 😭😭😭

"have to stack the deck in his favor somehow" jesus lord🥲 ik the twinyards would do anything for each other and ik the only thing andrew cared to know after being assaulted was if aaron was alright BUT this somehow feels bigger to me. maybe bc sa was nothing new for andrew but submitting this part of himself for examination by state officials was? andrew "get away from us" minyard giving these doctors this intrusive, unfair kind of power over himself bc he knows this is the only way to save aaron back rn😭

"who fears the monster that knows the taste of a whip?" this is the rawest fucking line everrr😱 andrew never fails to shakespeare. very revealing in terms of how he sees himself in his relationships - and a recurring motif too bc in the story where wymack recruits them to the team he says wymack can "loosen the chain" by letting him come off his meds during games. a chained monster who is only let loose when one of his own needs to be rescued by violence😬 i can only imagine how he felt when neil thanked him for being their defender (as opposed to others 'using' his services but being put off by the 'monstrous' parts of him) and told him he wants to see him lose control😳

"someone like you wouldn't understand the importance of hiding scars." 🥲🥲🥲 this is very sad but unfortunately now i can only think about that post i saw the other day about how andrew must have been showering wearing armbands in communal showers after away games bc otherwise everyone would know about his scars by now and then just what? went on wearing wet armbands? lol he probably brought an extra set but still - food for thought. also "andrew's smile was all ice" ?? is this a canon non medicated andrew smile before kevin changes his tattoo??? i'm gonna disregard this

"neurosurgeon, right? - ......................fuck you, andrew." it's so difficult being codependent sibling frenemies with andrew bc he will literaly help you fulfill your secret dreams and murder your abusers so you can't even be mad at him when you're playing machiavellian mind games to get him to let you date your girlfriend. like, there's no winning against this guy, he's always two steps ahead in your self-sacrificial frenemy game🥹🥰

"'i am capable of multitasking.' aaron heard what he didn't say: i blame us both." 😔😔😔 aaron pushing at andrew with the couch pillow to get him to look at him😌

thoughts:

wymack's chapter:

so when kevin makes the info about his father public wymack says it won't have any impact on his coaching which like, sure, bc in the books, seen from neil's pov, it doesn't look like kevin gets any special treatment from wymack neither before nor after the reveal. well, no sort of treatment more special than andrew & co get in any case. so it's interesting to see from wymack's pov that he indeed has a different kind of emotional investment in kevin even before he knows him to be his son - bc kevin is the son of this lowkey legendary woman who he used to love, who he was in a serious committed relationship with, who he believes did not reciprocate bc she had this kid with someone else and then broke things off with him, and who then died in tragic circumstances. so a bunch of complicated stuff, not even related to kevin being his son - bc it's not like he suspected all along, he just looks at kevin and sees kayleigh and that by itself creates an attachment different to those he has with the other foxes. i wonder if it really never had any impact on his coaching or if neil just didn't mention it.

betsy's chapter:

so betsy's chapter is devastating, right? right. it's this special brand of angst i really like when absolutely fucked up shit happens but the characters involved try to act like it's nothing by having funny banter etc to obscure the fact that everything is fucked, things changed drastically and you have no control over anything except your own surface level behavior. ig i relate to this a lot bc this was the communication style in my family and i got used to it so much i still struggle to hold a sincere conversation without diffusing each vulnerability with a joke. so that's what andrew and wymack are doing in that scene - andrew for the above reasons and wymack bc this is how they usually talk to each other and he doesn't want to offend andrew by suddenly changing it in the wake of what happened - and then there's betsy who breaks through this by asking difficult questions directly, plainly stating that things that happened to andrew are fucked up, putting her compassion into words and basically firmly urging him to process. i didn't like that😂

lmao i mean on a personal level, not like on a narrative level. ik this is her job as his therapist and ik this is what andrew probably needed to hear despite his manic jester facade but ngl i preferred when neil 'yelled' at him bc it was a nice contrast to everyone's concern and pity, esp given how it's confirmed that andrew specifically hates that everyone knows now and might see him as weak. like on the one hand i completely understand what betsy means when she tells andrew it's time to put the monster away but on the other it feels like she just doesn't get all the levels of fucked up he has to deal with. which is why ig he responds nope it's not time yet "with him on our heels" (i assume he means riko) and that's the end of it.

given that betsy somehow managed to gain andrew's respect after he had to go through so many therapists i always assumed that they work bc she meets him halfway and is able to understand the psychology behind his deals and coping mechanisms without being preachy about how he needs to drop them sooner or later. i imagined she had some sort of interesting individual approach with him. but this didn't feel individual enough to me - just your standard "you were abused but this is not your fault" (true, and?), "nobody will judge you for it" (maybe, but they will see him differently), "it's time to put the monster away and become a normal guy" (how will this solve any of the problems at hand tho?). "but everyone deserves to be a normal guy! a friend! a brother!🙂" lol ik i'm twisting her words but this is the vibe i got from betsy here so it's probably good we see so little of her and her therapy in the books - otherwise i'd have been disillusioned. idk she just makes me feel uncomfortable, i'm with neil on this one lol

(however, later in aaron's chapter when she says it's time to pull the knife from the wound so it can heal i think it's appropriate both setting and timing-wise)

aaron's chapter:

i agree with aaron when he thinks andrew avoided talking to betsy about neil bc it would open a whole can of worms and she'd make him confront his feelings and admit how important neil is to him. however, i don't agree with his assessment that andrew needed him and betsy to accept and approve him being gay. i don't think andrew never came out to betsy bc he thought she was homophobic in some shape or form, but rather bc coming out would lead to talking about the issues he wasn't ready to discuss with her yet - such as his sexuality in the context of his abuse and then ofc his feelings for neil. as for aaron's approval, i think aaron's is self-projecting a bit.

like, as a person who used to be very homophobic and who has learned to become less so at least in part due to having a close relative who is gay but has done so much good for him, i think aaron often has the issues of accepting queer sexuality on his mind and so he thinks it's the same for andrew. i don't want to say that andrew doesn't at all care what aaron's thinks of him being gay but it does seem like aaron sort of centers himself in this situation and assumes that his gay brother owes him this information - as in: andrew would've come out sooner or later and only hasn't done so up till now bc he was afraid of aaron's reaction - as opposed to: andrew doesn't need to come out if he doesn't want to for many reasons but esp bc the idea that queer people have to disclose their sexuality and sort of give the others an occasion to accept or reject them, to form an opinion about their identity, is hetero propaganda. like, figure things out for yourself, i won't tell you anything🙄 people can be important to you and you can still never come out to them bc you literally don't have to. maybe andrew didn't come out bc his sexuality was wrapped in all these big problems and traumas and feelings OR maybe he just didn't want to hear nicky's running commentary about it. maybe he just wanted to keep his private life private. all of these reasons seem more plausible to me than aaron claiming it's bc andrew was afraid of what aaron, betsy and the others would think of him if they found out.

so aaron framing this convo as this big moment for andrew makes me roll my eyes a little. "andrew needed a few moments to come to terms with their easy acceptance" "andrew wouldn't risk their unfavorable opinion" like, come on. someone thinks too much of himself and of his straight superpowers to grant self-acceptance to queer people by showing a minimum of support. andrew was probably pleased to hear that they won't be having additional issues to work on but that's about it.

so, in conclusion: you know the unreliable narrator neil discourse? many people in the fandom are convinced that neil is constantly lying, twisting and omitting information and there's a popular shitpost genre that's like "we would never have found out this *unimportant detail* if we hadn't gotten this other character's pov bc neil is so unreliable". i'm still irritated by this bc unreliable neil truthers seem so inexplicably sure that everyone is reliable except for neil (or more precisely: the more life has fucked you up the less reliable you are - but that is a post for another time) and therefore all other povs contain objective unbiased facts. well, i think this moment in the chapter is a good example of aaron being unreliable bc the way he interprets andrew's feelings seems to be colored by his own views and not consistent with how andrew is presented in the rest of the canon.

conversely, the way aaron explains his own homophobia - that it used to be about nicky's gayness itself but now it's more about how nicky's constant lewd comments make him uncomfortable - fits very well with their dynamic that we've seen before. i remember i first liked aaron bc nicky's sex jokes irritated me a lot and aaron was the only one to voice my irritation - so it was satisfying to get the confirmation that i judged his reasons correctly. it was also interesting to find out that he had enough insight to analyze why nicky was behaving this way.