#but it’s also possible that aftg is just built different

[giraffesanddietpepsi]

Having to figure out if it’s the hyperfixation dying or if it’s my attention span for the night is so annoying :P

[bisexualfagdyke]

truly believe andreil would be miserable and unfulfilled without each other ANYWAYYY tell me about ur hcs for andreil as people and also their relationship :P

ur so right. Also HELLO I loveyou oh my gawd. How dare you invite me to infodump.!!!!! I hVe many thoughts of them bcuz aftg (particularly Andreil + Jean) is my spinterest and also my other spinterests (a prominent one being queer Stuff) influence how I view them too?? So I have a lot of queer, self-indulgent headcanons for them that I don't think a lot of other ppl in the fandom understand but :3c whatevz

First of all. I PASSIONATELY believe they are t4t and butch4femme. Let me just explain my identity headcanons for them: Andrew is a (soft?) butch(4femme) bear/cub, agenderflux + gender apathetic trans man, gay man (ofc), and I see him as greyromantic/demiromantic too. I FIRMLY believe he has BPD, possibly BPD with ASPD traits. Neil is a butchy femme otter, genderfluid (genderfaunet specific) trans man, he/she, unlabelled achillean, demisexual (ofc) but also demiromantic, greysexual, greyromantic, and maybe nebularomantic/sexual too. I also lowkey like foxgender + catgender for him. I think he also has BPD, and autism. WHEW!!!!

I like the idea that Allison specifically helped Neil discover his femme identity :3c like, he took interest in her makeup and feminine fashion, and she helped him explore that. This is dear to me. I am very big into Neil wearing long skirts and feminine clothing, makeup, gold jewellery, and I think Andrew fucks w some eyeliner and silver jewellery too, and maybe the occasional dark coloured long skirt >:3 . I love the idea of Andrew being goth or having a style like that, but I'm not personally part of those subcultures so idk much about them!

With their relationship..... I am big into them being cuddlers & gentle & cute with each other. Obviously, they will never be a "typical" affectionate couple bcuz of their trauma & PTSD, but I like to think of them (especially Andrew) learning the gentleness of non-sexual intimacy & touch w each other, and I think they feel a love so strongly for each other, it changes them, allows them to understand softness and gentleness in their own ways.

I think Neil constantly buys Andrew sweet little treats, Andrew constantly wears Neil's clothing & buys Neil gifts (especially fox related things), they subtly but intentionally match clothing or accessory items. I am big into the idea Andrew loves to read too, IDC!!!! I KNOW that man enjoys curling up w some blankets and hot chocolate by a fire readinf some books. Gay ass. & I think Neil loves silly little movies & tv shows and has hobbies like knitting/crocheting or some other silly gay ass shit.!!! I think they are v possessive of each other (my BPD projection here, I fear). I do not think they ever get married or kids, but I think Aaron & Katelyn have kids and they are the weird uncles.!!! The "I love you" thing, I have no strong thoughts on – I can see Neil saying it, not so much Andrew. Honestly I dont like to think of them being separated post-canon on different teams bcuz I am DEEPLY attached to the foxes and their dynamic and it makes me PANIC to think of Andrew not beinf on the same team as Neil, or the foxes beinf separated in general, so I cannot give many thoughts on that.😭 I also love thinking abt them in all sorts of AUs, my fav beinf a fantasy AU where Neil is a runaway prince and Andrew is a skilled knight recruited to find him >:3 I am not creative enough to have a whole built story around that in my mind, but it's a dynamic I love thinking about. Also them in a zombie apocalypse AU.....<3 perfection. I also love thinking abt a more developed Neil & Jean friendship, and an Andrew & Jean friendship too!! Bcuz I LOVE Jean.

I probably have so much more I could say, just little silly headcanons & the such, but I HAVE YAPPED SO BAD!!!!!!! It's just an autistic mess in my brain when it comes to Andreil oh maii gawd. I feel like I have no cool meaningful headcanons its just entirely stupid silly self-indulgent shit (I project onto them So bad. If u couldnt tell.) but YKNOW! Thank you for askinf me questions though bcux I love love talking abt my special interests and aftg YAYYY!!!!! :33333 sorry for the yapfest. Blinks.

[bloody-wonder]

Every time I come across one of those posts or fics about how Andrew should feel bad about choking Kevin/how it was bad writing for Nora to have Andrew do it, it always seems to be Kevin superfans who are upset that Kandreil didn’t make it into the final draft. And every time I’m just baffled. How can people possibly feel so slighted by the exclusion of a pairing that Nora has said wouldn’t have made sense or been healthy in the final story anyway? The entitlement is just ridiculous

wowowow some juicy unpopular opinions are on the menu today!

i have a lot to say so buckle up. it’s gonna be one of those rants.

i have answered an ask about choking already. to sum it up: is choking kevin an acceptable mature way to express frustration at your bf being kidnapped by the mafia? no. is it in character for andrew? yes. will andrew apologize for it? no. will he and kevin still be friends? yes. 

first of all, i personally don’t see why kandreil would be unhealthy. i haven’t read nora’s statement about it but she didn’t elaborate, did she? it would be interesting to know why she thinks so but that’s unlikely to happen seeing as every word she utters about the characters she created gets her unproportional amounts of hate.

that being said, i totally see why kandreil would be out of character for the versions of kevin, neil and andrew that we see in the books. the relationships between kevin and the other two are certainly intense but i wish i didn’t have to suggest in the year of our lord 2020 that relationships can be intense without being sexual or romantic.

lets look at neil who’s canonically demi which means he has to have a profound emotional bond with a person in order to feel something like that for them. he has developed this bond with andrew throughout the books because they have similar backgrounds and are uniquely positioned to understand each other but more importantly because neil was put in a situation where he had to constantly actively communicate with andrew. andreil dialogues take up a large part of the books and enable us to see how andreil develops and works. nothing comparable happens between neil and kevin. they have a different dynamic altogether where neil looks up to kevin in the beginning for his exy skills and in turn kevin looks up to neil in the end for his being feisty in the face of imminent doom skills. neil chose to throw his anonymity away in order to stand up for kevin at kathy’s show which must mean he values kevin a lot, but he also antagonized him throughout the books, faulted him for not getting over his trauma in a timely manner and said the meanest things to him. a great and complex dynamic by all means. i have no complaints whatsoever and certainly don’t see them falling in love.

now lets look at andrew who isn’t aspec and has probably checked kevin out seeing as kevin is conventionally attractive. kevin & andrew is one of the most complex and interesting relationships i’ve ever seen in fiction. when we first encounter them their interactions are so intense that many readers (and neil) have interpreted them as a couple (because like i said before we tragically live in a society where tension is always seen as sexual). kevin and andrew met at such a time in their lives when they sorely needed something only the other was able to give: for kevin it was someone to stop him from returning to an abusive environment and for andrew it was someone who could see his real potential and worth behind his hostile manic exterior. so they started this weird co-dependent non-friendship which didn’t turn into anything else because - my big guess - neither of them wanted it to. andrew knows when he wants to fuck someone and knows how to arrange it but he didn’t with kevin because he already was a more important person to him than, for example, roland. the risks outweighed the benefits. but andrew did “arrange” it with neil probably because neil had something to offer which kevin had not. unlike kevineil where extensive relationship development had to take place in order for it to happen, kandrew could happen just because one of them suggested it. but guess what neither of them did and it’s canon. i for one am very happy that this unique exciting relationship wasn’t spoiled by romance.

finally lets look at kevin who isn’t a pov character like neil nor a character who’s constantly in neil’s focus of attention like andrew. we don’t have a comparable amount of information about kevin’s inner world so we have to surmise a lot of it just based on what neil cared to impart. so naturally the interpretations will differ. i personally see no signs of kevin being attracted to any person or any gender at any point in the books. there’s thea of course but she’s such an obvious last minute addition that i don’t even want to consider her. the kevin i know is living his best life as an unmarried childless aroace exy legend surrounded by friends and family and friends who are family. i’m aroace and imagining kevin single and happy is very important to me. it’s probably equally important to kandreil shippers to see some good polyamorous rep which is only slightly less rare in media than aroace rep. but the difference between me and kandreil shippers is that i have a magical ability to disagree with the author without cursing the very earth she walks upon.

ah yes, another difference is of course that they have an argument set in stone - kandreil was canon in earlier drafts. but do you know what else was there in the earlier drafts? jean was dead in them. so was erik in some of them which made nicky a different person altogether. also i distinctly remember nora writing that she has been developing this story for so long that she has shipped all the possible pairings at some point or another. kandreil aren’t special in that sense. what i am getting at is that in order to have a productive discussion we have to choose a particular draft of the story and stick to it, so if it’s a kandreil draft we have to know what else was different in that version, and if it’s the books then well kandreil isn’t canon in them end of story. 

that of course doesn’t mean that people can’t write absolutely stellar kandreil fanfics but it does mean that they have to dial down what you called “the entitelment”. because aftg means different things to different readers and if you insult the author for writing it the way you don’t like you also insult the readers who see themselves represented in the way the story is written. and kandreil fans are so aggressive. it’s smart of you sending the ask on anon cause otherwise they’d come for you so fast you wouldn’t know what hit you. just the other day i saw a post which basically said that the reason kevin is portrayed in fics in such a reductive way and writers don’t know what to do with him except make fun of his exy obsession and alcoholism is because andreil is built on the bones of kandreil and, being excluded from this relationship by the author, kevin can never be happy. this take right here illustrates very clearly that the shipping culture damages human brain in such a way that a fulfilling life outside a romantic relationship becomes inconcievable. fic writers diminish kevin to those things not because nora decided she wants her final draft to be about andreil, but because most of them aren’t able to write about a character unless they’re in a relationship. maybe some day fanfiction will develop past that but today is not that day.

i have read some kandreil fanfiction to see what the fuss is all about and my expert opinion is that all of it is ooc. clearly in order for kandreil to happen some manipulations with the existing characters have to be made. i consider myself a kevin superfan but i mean the kevin as he is in the books (and in my awesome hc). the kevin in kandreil fics i don’t know, he’s a character from a book i didn’t read so he can do whatever and date whoever, i don’t care either way. i only care when people insult the books, andreil or nora because they’re bitter that their ship isn’t canon. what a way to live in the year of our lord 2020. 

[bekaraar]

Aftermath (AFTG Bingo part 4)

Relationships:its kandreil but unrequited, andreil, jerejean,

Words: 1644

Read on AO3 here

Andrew had thought long and hard about why he did what he did. He has seen the reproving glances thrown in his direction from everyone, from Nicky to Dan.

And somewhere inside him, if he could go back and change what he happened, he knows he would.

But he can’t, so now, he has to deal with the aftermath.

Kevin wondered that if everything hadn’t played out the way it did, would those feelings of his, (the ones for the boys he thought loved him), would they not be unrequited?

Did he ever have a chance, or was just him, alone in every universe as he got lost in an endless cycle of betraying and being betrayed ?

Was there nothing to it?

He knew he had felt something for Andrew, he knew he had. It would be delusional to think otherwise, that he hadn’t felt something for the first person that had looked at him and had pointed out his flaws while also giving him a way to improve, in his own twisted way.

But then, Kevin mused, lying on his bed alone Neil had come, and Kevin saw himself falling in love with this boy that he had fallen in love with years ago (though he didn’t know it then. He never knew anything in time).

But he had seen him fall for Andrew and hadn’t really been able to blame him. Andrew was just like that.

And then the championships had rolled around and Neil had disappeared, and then, Kevin’s world came crashing down.

It’s weird, how he had allowed the people he trusted the most to let him down, not once, but twice.

Because when he had felt those strong hands close around his throat, he had cried, but not because of the pain. (He was horribly numb to pain. It was almost as if he couldn’t feel any of it anymore.) He had cried for another possibility lost, for another mistake that he had signed himself over to, another error that he had seen coming, but was too self destructive to let go. He had cried, because something in his head would not shut up.

Something that said:

Andrew should know th importance of keeping a secret that's not yours to share.

Andrew should know how to keep his promises.

Andrew should know that trust takes a long time to be built.

Andrew should know what abuse looks like.

Andrew should know .

So when they were back in the dorms and he could hardly speak because of the bruises lining his throat like the shackles he had tried to hard to escape, he realized that there was something he needed to do.

He took a deep breath, and went up to the roof.

*

Some say Andrew was suicidal. Others, like Neil, understood why he did it. Today, though, he did it mostly to escape his mind and that feeling of probably having broken another person. He wondered if Kevin also call him a monster now, in place of the carefully worded defenses that he gave to them when they asked him about the maniac on his team.

He looked up in slight surprise as he got on the roof and found Kevin there, with his arms around his legs, looking so so vulnerable, and childish, with those bruises across his neck that he had refused to cover with makeup.

Andrew wondered if maybe, he had misjudged Kevin Day after all.

The man in question looked up, his usually emotional face devoid of any feeling, and said, “There’s no need for the deal anymore.”

He got up after that statement and continued speaking though Andrew knew how much it must be hurting him.

“I kept my end.”

Andrew could fill in the blanks easily.

But you didn’t.

He left after that, but Andrew didn’t register it.

He was too occupied with the chorus of disappointed-letdown- broken breaking.

*

Kevin was back at Wymack’s apartment and Abby handed him a cup of honey tea for his throat and looked at him understandingly as she walked away to attend to her own doctorly business, leaving Kevin alone with Wymack.

Kevin busied himself drinking, more as an avoidance than anything, but he knew he was only putting off the inevitable.

And then Wymack sighed and turned to Kevin, but he cut him off.

“I talked to him,” Kevin said hoarsely, because he wasn’t even going try for normal now.

Things stopped being normal when Riko broke his hand.

“I spoke to him, and I’m moving in Nicky’s dorm.”

Wymack just raised an eyebrow.

“Aaron agreed to Andrew’s dorm?”

Kevin looked away.

“I didn’t give him too much of a choice.”

They left it at that.

Kevin was a master at avoiding people, but not when one of those was his sun and the other one was the planet around which he revolved.

No, Kevin thought. One of them was the meteor that had crashed into him and thrown him so, so off course and the other was the planet that had been saved.

But no one cared about the moon that had been thrown off course.

They were just grateful that the planet was saved.

He didn’t say anything much during practice.

For the first week, he said it was because of his throat, and no one could object to that, not when they had ignored him completely those first few days.

They had been forced to listen then.

Neil wasn’t playing yet, and Kevin hadn’t asked him once what had happened, though everyone had.

He didn’t want to talk to him.

Whatever feeling of friendship ( or more ) he once had was gone now.

Some things were just not meant to be.

And sometimes, Kevin thought, it would have been better if he had never been born at all.

He downed his drink.

*

Neil looked from where he was almost concealed by the shadows as he watched Kevin walk into Nicky’s dorm room, shitfaced.

He had seen Kevin retreat back into the hollow empty shell of the person he had been when he was under Riko.

But, a tiny voice inside his head said. Was it really that different?

Neil turned away and dismissed the thought.

It couldn’t be.

But could it?

*

Kevin had seen Neil in the hallway last night, and hadn’t been able to suppress that feeling, that feeling of rage, that almost bubbled inside him and threatened to flow over as he was reminded again and again by all the foxes just how lucky he was that Neil had negotiated his life away.

He was so fucking lucky.

He stared at the ceiling above him.

He wanted someone to talk to.

He wanted someone who wouldn’t look at him with silent contempt when he couldn’t express just what was wrong.

He inhaled and decided.

He needed to talk to Neil too.

Kevin stood out in front of the dorm building, and realized with a quiet pang that he would have to get his own car now.

It was funny how the little things hurt so much.

He started walking.

*

Neil was at the court, with of course Andrew.

His reasoning for being here so late was that he missed it, but all of them knew he missed more than just that.

Neil had thought a lot about how he had literally signed away two people’s lives, but every angle he considered it from give him the same outcome: there was no other way.

He sat in the goal, where Andrew would be, and remembered what it felt like to play because you wanted to, not because you had to.

*

Kevin walked into the changing rooms, and barely acknowledged Andrew, who stared at him with open hostility.

It does something inside him, a chorus of disappointment and sad and worthless and useless.

“I won’t harm him,” he bites out. “Don’t worry,” in a saccharine voice and he doesn’t flinch when Andrew walks close enough to touch him, but Andrew can sense the aborted move and distances himself, and Kevin hates that it still feels like its favour when he does that.

He hates it and he walks onto the court hating it and what he is about to do.

*

Neil is looking  at the goal, silently, when Kevin walks and sits near him, and it doesn't go unnoticed that he sits just out of reach, almost as if he had calculated it, though Neil knows he did, once.

Neil looks at Kevin in silent surprise and opens his mouth to say something when Kevin interrupts.

“I kept your secret.”

The as long as i could goes unsaid, but everyone hears it.

“Thank you,” Kevin says meeting Neil’s eyes. “For signing away my playing life.”

And Kevin means it with gratitude, and Neil knows he does, and for the first time he understands, that maybe, just maybe it was an overstep. That he could have said thta it was Kevin’s wish. That he shouldn’t have taken away that decision.

It is the closest he’ll come to regret.

And he stares at Kevin, struck by how dead inside he looks, and he stares till Kevin walks away, and that is when he realizes how badly they’ve fucked up.

*

Andrew realized, as he heard Kevin finish his little dialogue, that he was wrong. He was wrong in assuming that he was the one dealing with the aftermath.

It wasn’t him.

It was Kevin.

*

Kevin stared at his phone, at the offending number and picked it up.

“Hey,” Jean says, his voice filling the air around him.

“Hey,” Kevin says back, and he lets himself relax as Jean understands what he needs and fills the space around him with empty chatter.

He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

He was dealing with the aftermath, and somehow, it felt like he was going to be okay.

[thefoxholestuff]

ALRIGHT OK I FOUND IT (and cleaned it up a little bit but it’s still pretty messy and SUPER long so it’s under ‘keep reading’).

Ok so I’ve been listening to Falling by Harry Styles, right? And this song. This song is P E R F E C T for Andrew Minyard. Seriously just the self-loathing and the worry about becoming a bad person and ‘what if I’m someone I don’t want around’? Asdfghjkl. Like, possibly I’m just reading too much fanfiction and I haven’t read enough of the original series (only the first 1.5 books) but I feel like it captures Andrew’s concerns about who he is and his insecurities perfectly.

Alright shall we go line by line? We shall.

I'm in my bed And you're not here And there's no one to blame But the drink in my wandering hands

Andrew obviously has some hangups around consent, and obviously he’d never do something Neil (or any partner) didn’t give thorough verbal consent to, but I feel like he’d still end up worrying about it at some point (maybe in this one Neil has like one (1) drink at Edens and then acts weird the next day for unrelated reasons and Andrew starts worrying about whether there was a lot more alcohol in it than he thought/Neil’s tolerance is super low or something?). Idk this was the part that initially made me think of AFTG and I think this is Andrew’s greatest fear in one verse – being left alone again, and having it really be his fault this time, knowing that he deserves it. Of course, Andrew likely thinks that being abandoned so many times was already his fault somehow, but there’s a difference between thinking and knowing.

Forget what I said It's not what I meant And I can't take it back I can't unpack the baggage you left

For all his honesty, Andrew says a lot of things he doesn’t mean. Well, no. He means them, they’re just not the entire truth, and he sometimes expects people to interpret them properly and sometimes doesn’t. I think this would be about a time he said something to Neil that got misinterpreted (like all the ‘I hate you’s, or ‘I want nothing’s) (maybe he tells Neil something like that at an emotional moment, expecting that he’ll know what Andrew means that it’s his way of saying ‘I love you’ and take comfort from it, but Neil just doesn’t have the mental/emotional bandwidth to take his words at anything but face value). Also, ‘I can’t unpack the baggage you left’ is kind of a fun reference to the duffel bag and Andrew rifling through it when they were adversaries and the fact that he’d never do something like that now and wow this is a run on sentence isn’t it?

Oh my god we’re only through the first verse and this is like 700 words. Ok ok let’s keep going.

What am I now? What am I now? What if I'm someone I don't want around?

As much as we love Andrew, he doesn’t like himself very much. I don’t think he’s ever really been ‘someone [he] wants around’ but this could go a couple ways in the specific context of the song:

1.     Self-hatred spiral. ‘Nuff said.

2.     The argument/misunderstanding with Neil making him realize how deep in he truly is (because every time he thinks he knows the extent of his feelings, he’s proven wrong) and freaking him out because worrying about being hurt is the least of his problems (after all, he trusts Neil more than he trusts himself at this point – though he doesn’t trust him entirely yet). He’s built his entire identity out of being unfeeling and safe – what is he now that’s gone? What if it makes him dangerous? What if he doesn’t know how to handle wanting something? What if he can’t control himself? (Of course, Andrew has ridiculous self-control – but a lot of that is because he’s so scared of not having it.) And even if we ignore all that… who is he, if not the Monster? Andrew’s still a teenager (or very close to it), after all – identity crises are kind of our thing.

I'm falling again, I'm falling again, I'm falling

Again, either spiraling or falling in love – or both (because really, aren’t they a little bit the same thing?)

What if I'm down? What if I'm out? What if I'm someone you won't talk about?

Because if Neil hates him, he really is ‘down and out’, once and for all. I don’t follow the extra content perfectly in my interpretation of the series, but I do believe that if something awful happens to Andrew and Neil’s relationship early on, Andrew won’t recover easily. It’s not healthy to depend on a single relationship that much, but Andrew isn’t healthy at this point in his life. And it’s not that he can’t function without their relationship – he can’t deal with the idea of Neil hating him and it being his fault, with it being because he hurt the person he loves tolerates. He knows that if Neil decided to leave him behind, he’d be forgotten – Neil never talks about his past lives, and Andrew has no reason to believe he’d be any different. The idea of being forgotten, of being overlooked again, of being erased from another family, is, again, not something Andrew can really handle at this point.

Second verse… meh, from an Andrew standpoint. Let’s move on!

And I get the feeling that you'll never need me again

I love this line for Andrew. So. Much. This one actually reminds me of Aaron more than Neil but I think it could go for basically all of Andrew’s relationships during the series. Andrew bases his entire identity and reason for living off of being needed, primarily through his deals with Neil, Aaron, and Kevin. This is a fitting line for the end of the song and the end of the series, because Andrew has to reckon with not being ‘needed’ – not in the way he’s used to. All his deals are broken or defunct, but he’s slowly realizing that that isn’t the only way to need someone – that his loved ones need him and want him in their lives even without his deals and his protection. It’s also a beautiful line to cap his and Neil’s relationship in the series; Neil called off their deal. Not only did he stay, but calling off the deal was what allowed him to stay. Calling off the deal allowed their relationship to survive Baltimore by absolving Andrew of guilt and responsibility for Neil’s abduction. And Neil still wants to stay. Neil shows Andrew that he doesn’t have to be needed to be loved.

Anyway I just love this song as a backdrop for Andrew working through his problems. Doesn’t necessarily need to be in any particular order, or during any specific time period. I’m aware that this is not chronologically coherent.

Alright, I’m done. Sorry for such a long post, I really really really like comparative analysis.

Andrew will randomly hear mainstream pop (love) songs and he hates them on sight but then he subconsciously finds himself relating to the lyrics and it makes him Mad and he furiously ups the percentage against neil