#instead of just voting for their friends

[bigassbowlingballhead]

Someone online: this season of the circle is so boring. They’re so strategic.

Babe. It’s a social strategy game. They’re SUPPOSED to be strategic.

[billdenbrough]

fundamentally disinterested in the recurring discourse about kevin's drinking that aims to a) make it his Specific Problem To Focus On And Overcome when it is a crutch and coping mechanism to get him through a Much Bigger Problem (emotional fallout he can't square with by himself, culture shock, trauma, loss of his extremely wildly co-dependent relationship w riko, losing the structure of the nest, mourning a future he was meant to have, processing a grave injustice, anger and fear and desperate grief, all of which is his Actual Specific Fox Problem) while he builds himself back up, and b) thinks that even if it is a problem (more on that later), it's the foxes' problem to deal with.

like. it's just not.

yeah, he doesn't drink until he meets them. they gave him that habit, and in traditional terms, they're (the monsters specifically) a 'bad influence'. but these are the foxes. this is kevin day, son of exy, whose meteor is crashing spectacularly through no fault of his own. there are no traditional terms to be found here. the framework for it literally doesn't exist. neil comes into the foxes with more conventional expectations—appalled at the athletes' substance use, his horror at matt's trip to columbia, his steadfast and early repeated stance that none of the foxes should let andrew treat them the way he does, and certainly not nicky—and tends to engage with them less as the series goes on and he folds himself into the foxes. the thing about the foxes is that they've all been in pits deeper than they are tall. and some of them got a helping hand on the way—erik, andrew's extreme intervention methods, stephanie walker—and wymack was always waiting for them on the other side, ready to throw down a rope, but all the foxes dragged themselves out of their own holes. often not alone, often not without assistance, but at the end of the day, they have to do it.

there's that line neil has about aaron in that scene that got deleted when the timeline shifted around, when he thinks about how aaron got this far in life on his own, surviving on willpower and sheer desperation. that applies to aaron in a way that's a little more acute than some of the rest of them—boy who doesn't let the foxes in bc of andrew, boy who doesn't let nicky in bc he doesn't know how, boy made of flinching and seeking an escape and grieving the one who hurt him—but is broadly true for the foxes en masse.

this isn't to say the foxes can't help each other, but it's not their job. it just isn't. they'll keep kevin alive, keep him safe, keep him flanked and contained within their ranks. they'll fight tooth and nail in this battle with him, fight to get him to that championship game, fight to get that trophy in his hands. but that's all they've agreed to. that's all they're responsible for, in this covenant they've made with him. he says they can make this happen, and they're going to get him to that final game, but it's up to him what state he's in when he gets there.

like. they're foxes. they've been triaging their whole lives. they hate each other and they hate everyone else more. they're the kids with their backs up against the wall. half of them are addicts. i don't think kevin is comparable, personally; he's getting through a horrific situation with a coping mechanism. that's not the same thing as battling yourself to stop using. but that's not really the point of this. what i'm getting at here is that to the foxes, it's easy math: kevin who can lean on vodka and andrew and wymack and the foxes to stay upright when he's not ready to stand on his own two feet is still a kevin who is standing. a kevin with one less piece of scaffolding to lean on is a kevin who falls over, a kevin at risk of complete collapse, a kevin one phone call away from running back to the master, a kevin one crucial loss away from not ever making it back to himself at all. they're triaging. this is low on the totem pole of things they have the room to care about. they very much have bigger problems, both individually and even just kevin-related. if alcohol makes seeing the boy he knew best in the world and moved in tandem with his whole life and who destroyed their entire legacy and his entire life in one move — if alcohol makes facing that boy easier to stomach, then, fuck, why would they take that away? they're foxes. they've all got their demons. this is what kevin needs this year and a half to let him face his, that's all. they can understand that. it doesn't have to be pretty, as long as it keeps him in the fight. that's the priority.

i think there's absolutely space to explore this in fic and art and fandom in a way that maybe does explore it as a Problem, both that it's an active problem for kevin & that it's something to explore other foxes helping him with (there's a t&n fic that i've been gnawing at the bit to read for months that seems poised to explore this premise, and that's super up my alley)! i just think we're in different territory when we're talking about the series—and its characters and dynamics—in a conversational rather than transformational way, and end up talking about this like the foxes are responsible for kevin's choices. i love kevin day. i read these back at the start of 2015 & he's so dear to me that loving him was the blueprint for how i feel abt kageyama. but it's been pretty weird to see how the conversation has been translating Loving Kevin Day into... thinking the foxes are doing wrong by him with respect to this in actual canon. like that's just not how it operates there

[moeblob]

So uh. Eventually I'll stop drawing these guys so obsessively but not today I guess.

(DND AU where it's just these two, Brent, and Paul on a life mission to annoy Chris the GM by having the pact of "we're only here for Karen's benefit")

Karen is a warlock, Right is a cleric, Paul is a paladin, and Brent is a bard (so he can use bardic inspiration on Karen).

[scarefox]

Pick your faves from my faves game!

Challenge: make a poll with five of your all time favorite characters, and then tag five people to do the same. See which character is everyone's favorite.

got tagged 2 times by @enigmaharper and @bisexualboysbroadcast

This is going to look so random haha... but there might be a pattern in there who knows (also I list more than 5 because)

alright, that aren't even all but let's keep it at that

I don't know who has already done this but I tag: @braceletofteeth @slayerkitty @maleficent-cannoli @cryptidafter @scrollll

[darkwood-sleddog]

working with the public or as i like to call it "baby boomer babysitter club"

[felignis]

i think chappell roan enforcing her boundaries to creepo parasocial fans is so fucking awesome and based and she should be allowed to do whatever she wants forever

[gingergari]

my ipad wants to give up the ghost so bad but my team past guys!

[g3othermal3scapism]

post-election moodboard

[silverhalla]

neve came back and I IMMEDIATELY started crying

[darkacademiaarchivist]

i had a conversation with my aunt today about how the system and politics and basically everything is fucked at the moment (which is true) and she was SO CLOSE to so many points but she never acknowledged that capitalism is the root of so many of those problems... Bestie you're So Close...

[maeamian]

I don't feel like disputing history with the person who wrote the post I'm subtweeting here, and agree with their larger point mostly, but the Brooks Brothers Riot and US Supreme Court are far far far more responsible for GWB's election than Ralph Nader or the Green party ever was and it's important to me that you, my followers, are aware of this.

[rocksalt-and-pie]

actually no. im not gonna be posting about the Current Events. figure it out yourselves

[hauntingblue]

Rewatching act 2.... yeah ISHA WATCH OUT FOR THE CYCLE ISHA!!!!! NOOOOO

[indi-glo-archive]

i feel like if you think writing/thinking about teenagers having sex is icky you should maybe just not write a coming of age story about teenagers that very heavily centers their relationship and exploration of their sexuality

[triglycercule]

i am severely upset at the sexyman polls for this year. yeah its absolutely because im biased and not a single one of the mtt won. but killer vs error is still going on you say!!! NO,,,,, killer's lost,,,,, its 70 error 30 killerISH so yeah,,,,, none of the mtt MADE!!!! IT!!!! and with the boom in killer content these past few months i wasSO FUCKING SURE that he'd like AT LEAST get higher up. nope. because of ERROR. listen i like him. he was my og bias when i first joined this fandom. i was an error fanatic. but bro,,,,, bro,,,,,,,,, killer,,,,, lost,,,,,, AND FUCKING HORROR AND DUST LOST TOO!!!! LIKE WHAY. WHAT. PUTTING HORROT AGAINST ERROR AND DUST AGAINST CROSS!!!! THEYRE LITERALLY BOTH THE TWO GUYS THAT (1/2 of them) WON LAAT YEAR!!!! OF COURSE THEYRE GONNA BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF THE MTT!!!!! this is very upseting im really sad imMAD. but no point in being a sore loser.... mtt won in my HEART 🧡

dust laughing at both horror and killer for getting the shit beaten out of them by error and then they bring up the fact that he lost to CROSS. this is the second time someone in the mtt lost to cross (theyre all making out in the loser's room) (mtt poly real btw)

[bright-and-burning]

seeing all of these worst mutuals tags and wow . either my memory is a lot worse than i thought or i’ve been having a pretty solid internet experience