#remember when that was with kevin...

[feelingthedisaster]

i cannot have a single stable blorbo. in my first read it was neil and wymack. then it was kevin. now i have aaron and jean rotating in my mind with the recurring aparition of dan and andrew. like girl pick one

[4phr0d17e]

my contribution to the aftg twitter aus is i think andrew would post that tweet thats like "if the goalie saves more than 30 shots and their team still loses they should be allowed to chase their teammates around with hammers" and laila retweets it and the two of them strike up a friendship that consists solely of sending each other goalie related memes. very occasionally andrew sends laila a message after a trojan match that just says something like "nice save at 32mins 4secs" and laila doesnt know andrew well enough to know how absolutely groundbreaking it is that he would say that

[kiwiaok]

I love that kevin grieved riko. like, of course, he did. don’t people say that grief is the final form of love? and kevin did love him, I think. he loved him once, before, and he loved him after, still. loved him in a way a kicked dog still loves its owner, because even with face twisted in anger and palms shaking from violence that owner is still the same person that gave it a home once. he grieved him because when someone suddenly becomes undeserving of your love– does it ever leave? that love? or does it grow its own legs and continue to wander this world without regard for the validity of its existence

of course kevin grieved. the aftertaste of his love for riko was still fresh on his tongue

[privateolives]

This is probably because I grew up watching 24/7 animal planet, but what finally made the allo/aplatonic thing click for me were the nature's of big cats.

Lions are powerful, regal creatures who are uniquely adapted to pack life. They need these connections to live a healthy life; A lonely lion is a miserable creature indeed.

Jaguars are solitary, beautiful creatures who live happily solitary. They prowl their lush world with self-sufficient majesty. A jaguar is not lonely without a pack. In fact, forcing jaguars to share space with others they do not enjoy is just as damaging as forcing a lion to live alone.

A lion may choose to head out on it's own for the most part, but in the end must return to the pack to thrive. A jaguar can choose to trust and enjoy the company of others, but they never feel the need to form a pack.

Is a jaguar selfish for this? A psychopath, a narcissist or any other such horrid assumptions? Is it a less moral creature than a lion, who seeks others like it to thrive?

Is a lion pathetic, or needy, or selfish for wanting community? For requiring contact with others like they require water? For their inherent need to string complicated webs of relationships that may seem silly or dramatic to others?

Of course not. These are ridiculous questions to even ask.

They are simply lions and jaguars.

In fact, is a jaguar that chooses to spend time with you not as magical as a lion's love? For a creature that needs no bond to thrive to still enjoy your presence enough to share it a time? Is a lion who can prowl the night alone not impressive in its strength and resilience? Is it not awe-inspiring in its ability to conquer a life it was never wired for and reign still?

Are they not both beautiful and awe-inspiring in their own ways, without being wrong?

Alloplatonics. Aplatonics. Are we not both special and beautiful in both our bonds and self-confident happiness equal, in each our ways? Is there not unique beauty in lifelong bonded packs and magical encounters that need no perpetuity to carry life forward?

Are we not but lions and jaguars? Neither wrong, neither selfish, but just different and beautiful creatures in each our ways?

That's how I've come to see it, anyway.

[wolf-saint]

I need someone to do intense research on how Kevin went from his exy obsessed, uptight fan caricature to all these down-bad, slutty iconic fanart, fics and memes.

[odetojupiter]

i see you saying that it’s heartbreaking that wymack set up the foxes to help people with trauma but couldn’t help his own son and i raise you: wymack saved kevin before kevin left the nest, without even knowing. kevin never would have left the nest if he didn’t have somewhere to go, and wymack - with the media attention he garnered with the foxes - became such a trustworthy figure in kevin’s mind that he didn’t doubt for a second that wymack would take him in and keep him as safe as he could. wymack did help kevin, before they had even met each other, by being such a strong beacon of hope that kevin was drawn to him despite the fact that he was raised and abused in a cult and probably found trusting anyone difficult, let alone someone he hadn’t met.

something else to consider: the foxes are still a newish team (if i remember correctly seth’s year is their first year, dan is their second, meaning neil is their fifth), and jean tells neil that kevin only found out wymack was his dad a few years ago when neil is in the nest. this means that kevin will have been aware of who wymack was - outside of wymack having played the sport prior to coaching - and would have seen the type of person he was before he knew they were related. he’d have witnessed from after wymack fighting tooth and nail to support his foxes despite all the mess, the tragedies, would have seen him staying firm in his belief in second chances BEFORE he found out wymack was his dad.

think - kevin saying to jean imagine having that. jean would say it’s a publicity stunt, it’s not real, those types of people don’t exist and kevin would agree and say they’re a shit team anyway, but something about wymack always rang true to him. maybe after that conversation he didn’t bring it up - other than to say i think my mother would’ve liked dan wilds when it’s announced she’s the new captain. but he still sees wymack’s actions in his periphery, and it’s enough to build up a picture of him as someone who is real. and then he finds out it’s his dad

imagine how that would have been for kevin - going from living in a cult, cut off from any family he may have had after kayleigh’s death to suddenly being told he has a dad, and that dad is the type of person who would have risked himself if he knew what was happening to kevin.

[ninyard]

niche hc but when Neil is having a Learn Every Language In The World day, he’s just being annoying with Andrew and going through every European language and stopping to google a few phrases before moving on. Eventually he gets to Ireland and Kevin’s not really paying any attention to him until Neil says a word like ‘thank you’ or ‘goodbye’ and he freezes up in the corner of the room.

Andrew notices straight away obviously and stops Neil but then Kevin just starts to cry.

When Kevin’s mother was alive she would call him pet names in Irish, and use some Irish words sporadically here and there when she was speaking, like most Irish people do, and he hasn’t heard anyone speaking Irish since she passed away. Thank you is one of those phrases that a lot of Irish people use day to day just to keep the language alive, and it was always one of those things she made him say as a younger kid to help her feel close to home.

Nobody really knows what to do, and he’s not sure whether he’s happy or sad or both or neither, but just hearing the language out loud causes such a visceral reaction for him that he can’t help it. It’s the first time in a while he’s caught himself thinking, I miss my mom.

[bnha-trash]

spinner is taking the photo 🦎📸

[rosenqvists]

KEVIN MAGNUSSEN - ASMP UNLOCKED | A DREAM | 2021 REV Group Grand Prix at Road America (1/2)

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

i can’t handle watching s1 and seeing how amazing kev used to be before they decided to dumb him down wayyy to much

[raevenswritingdesk]

This ^^

[knox-knocks]

I don’t talk enough about kevin which is a shame cause he’s my boy. anyway I was wondering what kevin’s love language is and I think it’s totally acts of service

Sure he doesn’t give a lot of praise, and he might not be great at comforting someone when they need a shoulder to cry on, but he’ll cook someone a nice meal when they’re sick and haven’t eaten. he’ll clean the whole dorm when andrew’s stressed over something but won’t admit to it, cause he knows andrew likes to keep things tidy. he schedules in extra private practices with neil when he’s feeling frustrated over his game and needs to work it out. when nicky is sad and feeling lonely without erik, kevin will make sure he has some extra time after practice to call him

He’s demanding, grumpy, and maybe a bit of an asshole. but the foxes know he cares and tries to show it, in his own way. he gets it from his father after all

[dayurno]

basically

[tigtree]

now if i said precanon riko and kevin….

[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

[dysfunctionalcreature]

I'm delirious and half asleep but I just had the thought:

Kevin in a moment of weakness begging Andrew to call him a "girl", not even caring whether Andrew says it in a positive or derogatory way, and Andrew responding by calling Kevin "babygirl".... of course Kevin fucking melts at that