#i love andrew sm

[powderofcats15]

Cozy evenings~ and messy bed headshshs

(I just started reading TSC :D )

[starkingdraws]

8.5 hours later… my boy is done 🫶

[joejhang]

fanon neil vs canon neil

god i am so FUCKING done with the aftg fandom mischaracterising neil i'm literally writing fucking ESSAYS about it and pacing circles muttering about it under my breath it's driving me up the goddamn wall so i am going to word vomit brain dump yap about all of it in an incoherent tumblr text post. spoilers ahead continue at ur own risk

i've said it before and i'll say it again I HATE FANON NEIL. istg this fandom LOVES to mischaracterise neil and ykw i think i know why. they take the smallest most unnoticeable parts of his personality and then exaggerate them to disproportionate and unrealistic levels in order for him to fit their idea of a conventional, stereotypical and desirable main character. they smooth out his jagged edges and prick at his "insecurities" to make him more likeable, more acceptable and more conventional of a narrator/main character and in doing so erase so fucking much of his personality and draw as a character that he loses just about all of the flavour that made me love him in canon. and also especially within the andreil dynamic this fucking fandom just loves to tweak neil's character until he's basically unrecognisable just so they can cram andreil into some preconceived socially acceptable clichéd ship dynamic. because andrew is perceived as the typical mysterious, moody and grumpy love interest therefore neil just has to be the sunshiney smiley blushing cute softboy in exchange. yeah because all gay ships have to be grumpy-sunshine and black cat-golden retriever dynamic. i raise you: andreil's dynamic doesn't work because of their differences it works because of their similarities. if u think about it andrew and neil are honestly very similar people in the way they think and process emotions and events and that's what allows them to connect and understand each other. andreil would not work if neil was super sunshiney and a blushy soft mess and andrew was the stoic, never smiling, unemotional stone of a guy the fandom loves to make them. just accept they do not fit into the conventional boxes laid out by booktok for what gay ships look like. i fucking digress.

neil is also just insanely mischaracterised on his own. people love making him very jittery and insanely oblivious and easily flustered with a generous serving of self-esteem issues. i hate to break it to you guys: neil josten is not insecure. i don't think there's a single instant in the series where neil is actually insecure about anything. as a narrator, person and character, neil is very realistic, pragmatic and logical. ruthlessly so. i'd say on this, neil is even more cerebral and unemotional than andrew is. neil is very straightforward and realistic abt himself in his narration and i'd honestly say his opinion and views about himself are one of the only things in the story that isn't affected by his narrator bias. if neil is anything, it's self-aware. i'm now going to present all my fucking evidence.

neil doesn't have a sexuality crisis. literally in the entire series never once does he even question his fucking sexuality. it's implied he's already figured out he's aspec/demisexual from the moment nicky questions him about his sexuality. neil says "i don't swing" and follows up in his narration: it wasn't quite the truth, but it was close enough. and later when he starts his relationship with andrew he doesn't ever question the nature of his feelings towards andrew or even anyone else and is pretty clear about it when andrew breaches the topic: "kissing you doesn't make me look at them any differently" so yeah neil is pretty certain and aware of his sexuality.

neil isn't insecure about his appearance. i feel like this is gonna require a bit of work to explain but hear me out. it is mentioned several times that neil has a complicated relationship with his appearance because he looks so much like his father/abuser. this is obviously understandable; you wouldn't want to look into the mirror and see the man who gave u all ur scars. that being said, neil doesn't have a lot of strong emotions regarding his appearance. most of his feelings of panic tied to when r*ko dyed back his hair is because of how it would be a lot easier for his father to discover him now that he has his original colouring back. i'm also pretty sure neil knows that he's cute. like it's never explicitly stated but i've reread aftg maybe fifty times and trust me i can read between the lines. neil explicitly says that he has a "love-hate relationship with his reflection out of necessity" and while the "hate" part of that statement is obvious: he doesn't like that he resembles his father, i've sort of just accepted that the "love" part of it is that he knows he's kinda fine. it's not brought up by him at all bc neil as a person is not one to linger on people's appearances almost at all. i think the only people to get a decent amount of lines dedicated to their appearance in the narration are allison and andrew. but yeah i genuinely don't think neil thinks he's ugly or unattractive and he's probably definitely been told how cute he is by others enough that he doesn't harbour any delusions about how he looks. regarding his scars, he never expresses any insecurity towards them and how they look, he just doesn't like them on display understandably bc of how acutely they point to his past and childhood that he's trying to hide.

neil is actually very very confident in his own and other people's abilties. this is esp regarding exy. he knows he's good at the game. like he knows. the most distinct example i can think of for this point is when kevin tells neil that he was at castle evermore to try out for the perfect court when they were younger. neil doesn't even doubt for a fucking second that he would've made it onto the perfect court. never does. he skips over the second-guessing and doubt part and just straight up starts daydreaming about the future he could've had playing with kevin and r*ko. like that really got me bc it's easy to assume neil would be super unassuming and have low self-esteem but no like neil doesn't doubt for a fucking second that he deserves to be perfect court. it's just that he doesn't believe in r*ko's delusions enough to play along with it by the time he gets the tattoo. he's also insanely confident about the foxes and their abilities and also kevin by the end of the series. at the beginning he takes a pretty realistic vantage point and says that with the way things are, the foxes will never beat the ravens. but even with that pov he still has the gall to challenge r*ko on LIVE TV and i doubt he's lying when he declares so boldly to everyone that if the foxes were united they'd be an unstoppable force (and guess what he was fucking RIGHT). and by the end, when the foxes are united, he has no more room left for doubt at all. some guy tells neil to kick the ravens' asses and neil just replies with zero hesitation "that's the plan". like he's so fucking on board with it. and he never once doubts that kevin is the best striker in the game. like literally never. at first he considers r*ko and kevin on par with each other (possibly, it's never stated outright) but by the end he literally has no doubts when he says "kevin is the best striker" like goddamn the amount of confidence neil has is so underrated.

neil is a very unemotional narrator. it actually gets me all the time how logical and ruthlessly pragmatic neil's narration and inner monologue is. some of the only strong emotions portrayed in neil's narration are anger, irritation and occasionally grief, which is only ever triggered by major trauma-inducing events (e.g. dr*ke). almost all of his inner monologue is analytical and observing others and dissecting either other people or the situation he's in. and almost all of his decisions and actions are made based on impulse and instinct. neil is a very instinctive person. this is outright stated in the way he plays exy; in theory, he can't give u a lot, but in the heat of the moment he's at his best. this applies to practically all facets of neil's life. he never plans his moves or what he's gonna say (except like that one time when he planned out what half-truth he was gonna tell andrew post-columbia). he's super quick and on the ball and literally does whatever the fuck he wants at any given moment. he's also insanely good at compartmentalising. like it's difficult to explain but while his priorities are obv hilariously skewed, they're also very clear in his mind. things he considers unimportant he simply just doesn't think about. what others look like and what they think of him don't factor into his internal monologue or his thoughts at all he literally just files them away in the back of his mind until they do end up becoming useful or important to him. he barely comments on andrew's appearance at all until andrew becomes someone worth staring at and admiring for him. the only reason he describes allison and renee in the detail that he does is because it's important in understanding how and why he reacts to them the way he does. this man was literally about to lose his goddamn mind at the fall banquet but he specifically reserved his mental breakdown for after the banquet so he could spend his time roasting the fuck out of r*ko. bro fully locked in and was like "clock riko now break down later" and i respect it.

neil doesn't actually have a martyr complex. it's funny because almost all of aftg is him being the absolute fucking opposite of a martyr. he wilfully sticks around the foxes knowing he's putting himself and them in danger. he doesn't "sacrifice" himself until he's absolutely forced to by his father's people. by then, he's already told himself he can't and won't run and he's smart enough to know he'll never get away anyway. and going to evermore wasn't about self-sacrifice or martyrdom it was about protecting andrew and those two are pretty fucking different. he knew he was coming back from evermore and he knew that he wouldn't die there, despite all the shit he went through, so i don't think that can be counted as "self-sacrifice". he was doing what he had to do to protect andrew, the same as andrew would've done for neil or aaron or kevin or anyone else he'd sworn to protect. the kidnapping in baltimore was the culmination of neil's character arc, which isn't really about learning to be selfless and self-sacrificing, it's about learning to stand his ground and stop running. those things r crucially different: neil not running in baltimore wasn't about selflessness, it was about courage. yes, part of it was obviously inspired by the foxes and motivated by not wanting them to be hurt but i truly believe it ultimately was about neil learning to stand his own ground and make his own home and have it be something he's willing to die for. call it whatever u want honestly i just don't think neil is as much of a martyr/sacrificial lamb as the fandom makes him out to be.

[codename-adler]

3.

Welcome back to the Neil & Seth shitshow!

i love my dummy sweet pea princesita seth sm we were robbed of his 3 brain cells

*Context for the Aaron tweet: in my Kevaaron fic “dance ‘til you find someone to die for” as well as my Kathea 🌺 wip et general hcs where Aaron and Katelyn have to separate, Kate has a mental breakdown from her multiple undiagnosed mental illnesses and thus is interned into a psych ward for months while events unfold on the outside. i just saw the tweet and thought it was funny and a lovely coincidence :)

>> GC next >>

[allforthesapphic]

need a fic where andrew and neil are finally on the same pro exy team but! they decide to keep up the minyard-josten rivalry rumors because they are instigators at heart, let’s be real.

so they yell at eachother in Russian and everyone (the team, the fans, etc) assume they’re insulting each other when in reality they’re yelling about their cats dinner and percentages.

and one day at some like team celebration or whatever, one of the teammates starts talking to their s/o in fluent russian. and andrew and neil are like uh… and confront the teammate, who just shrugs and mutters something about not wanting to get in the middle of their foreplay

[sepulchralblues]

“You were supposed to be a side-effect of the drugs” is possibly one of the most heart-wrenching lines of the series. It’s Andrew fighting with every cell in his body not to give into his desire for Neil. It’s Andrew begging himself not to do this, not to get hurt. It’s Andrew trying, pleading to the drugs that no longer cloud his vision to make Neil a part of them, because there was no way he could be real.

Neil, who took Andrew’s words at face value but saw the truth buried inside them. Neil, who knew what Andrew’s promises meant to him, and who kept his promise, for the first time. Neil, who saw more than he should. Neil, who never took more than Andrew gave and knew that no meant no. Neil who fought tooth and nail against Andrew’s defences to gain an inch then worship it like it was sacred ground.

Neil who could not, should not, must not, be real. It could only have been a side effect of the drugs.

No wonder Andrew fell in love.

[clowningcrows]

is it horribly cringe to pick your new chosen name based off of your favorite book character (who is also ftm autistic!!) or is that like…. okay

[gaywerewolfsimp]

I love Andrew sm unfortunately that also means i love making him suffer

[shuutingstar]

can’t believe Kevin has chemistry with two separate couples who have their own books centred around them — and Kevin plays a big part in both of their lives — and this guy ends up with Thea. THEA.

[landomeowrris]

andrew minyard goes pro and gets a lot of tickets for random sports matches/games he never attends, but one day, three years into his pro career, red bull extends an invitation to him to be in their garage for the us gp (cota, texas), and andrew surprises his pr manager by saying yes on the spot

and at the same time mclaren extends neil an invitation for him to be in their garage for the same gp, and he couldn't care less about racing, but he accepts it because he knows andrew is going and they want to see each other after months apart, being on different teams and all

this is at the peak of the minyard-josten rivalry and fans are concerned about them fighting on the paddock but instead they're spotted walking around the paddock together several times

it's also at the peak of our current max-lando championship fight (rbr-mcl) and it only serves to fuel the fans conspiracy theories but the reality is that andrew is literally trying to explain the rules and format of the race weekend and neil giving him heart eyes because andrew sounds really excited about it

[kevindavidday]

thank you nora sakavic for reinforcing that aaron minyard is just the fucking best

[blue-jos10]

literature is to andrew what exy is to neil.

and neil is a god of literature the way andrew is a god of exy.

[amazing-spiderlad]

Happy pathetic gay men with religious trauma day to those who celebrate

[deviously-devious]

I love them so much my blorbos

[supergraphicmodernfangirl]

Yall, can we please talk about how Irish hozier sounds on nothern attitude....