theseyellowdays

[theseyellowdays]

Picture that was brazenly put on the Foxes' wall of photos, and the only one that vanished almost as quickly as it was put there.

(Once Nicky saw a corner of purple picture under the paperback pile that Andrew has on his desk, but has learnt his lesson of snooping so he left it be. But he was smiling like a sap at Andrew the whole day)

Happy birthday Neil!!!!!!!!

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happy birthday neil homojosten pretty sure you’re the same age as my mother now

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happy birthday neil josten and his little fox paw doodles and his fraying-at-the-hems shirts and his scary ahh smile and his electric blue bambi eyes and his unsettling demeanour and his inability to half-ass anything except for school and his fearlessness and ruthlessness and his love for maths of ALL fucking things and his zombie cowboy halloween costume and his bad temper and his smart mouth that only knows how to talk mad shit, lie, and kiss andrew and his pretty face and his four minute mile and his favourite colour being grey and his five-something languages that he speaks and his fierce devotion to exy and the foxes and jean and his insane aura and his general nonchalance and his breakfast burrito that he hid behind and his napkin that he ordered a hit on and his stalker binder and his keys and cigarettes. i will never love another the character the way i love neil josten.

[theseyellowdays]

Twitter rlly liked this one

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pre-tfc , extra content :

the raven king, chapter eight :

the king's men, chapter ten :

the king's men, chapter seventeen :

kandrew [ w/ neil ] + the 2 year quest

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andrew wasn’t fast enough this andrew wasn’t fast enough that — what about aaron

aaron who was faster than neil. aaron who watched someone try to kill his brother the same way he killed his brother’s rapist. aaron who managed a panicked warning before they swung on andrew. aaron who was on the strikers a heartbeat later, fists flying.

aaron who wasn’t fast enough

do you think he had nightmares after it. do you think the nightmares ever stopped. do you think they were exacerbated by the trial. you think he woke up clinging to katelyn. do you think andrew woke up from surgery and asked where aaron was. do you think aaron studied clavicle injuries and clavicle surgery because he needed to know exactly what was going to happen to andrew while he was under. do you think he told andrew what he’d learned to reassure him even though andrew never admitted how anxious he was. do you think andrew made some sly comment that was only for aaron to interpret as appreciation. do you think aaron blamed himself anyway

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Neil could really have been a very suave criminal mastermind if he'd chosen to be. I'm rereading the kings men and the whole thing is basically just Neil gently manipulating people to do what he wants them to, and figuring out how to put anyone who won't come around to his way of thinking (Aaron) under pressure so that they just do what he wants. He wouldn't need to be as violent as his father, the guy just knows how to read people and figure out what they want, and what they can't afford to lose. He'd have them eating out of his hand if he wanted to do anything more than play stickball have boyfriend.

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Okay, I might be pulling this out of my ass but since that finals match was in Evermore that means the foxes should have been wearing their white away jerseys. Which means: the final match was a game of chess.

Not only are they wearing white, but they have first serve (Dan won the coin toss), and near the end the Foxes' king (Neil, because this is a battle between Riko and Neil) changes positions with the tower (Matt, a defenseman that towers over most people) creating the illusion of a castling.

And right there at the end, Riko attempts to kill Neil because they're in front of each other, but that's not how kings work. In the time it takes him to take that step, Andrew closes the gap and strikes. Check mate.

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Okay but it’s fucking brilliant that one of the themes of the book was about the distortion of history.

Usually prequels are a dangerous thing to write because unless they’re planned out well in advance, they risk contradicting lore in the main series. Even still, we knew barely anything about Haymitch’s games. They were the perfect stomping ground for new information, with a rough series of events but without a close temporal connection to the main books.

But though she had this freedom and safety net, while she could have just written a story that aligned with what we knew, Collins leaned into the idea of contradicting past lore head on and made it the damn thesis of the book; that yeah, actually, it did play out entirely differently from how the characters saw it, and yes that contradicts what you were told, that’s the point.

We didn’t really know what happened in the 50th games until we read it from Haymitch’s perspective, because what little information we did have was spliced up and edited. The video evidence was processed through the Capital, and twisted to serve their purposes.

Tackling that idea of history being written by those in power with a notoriously inconsistent medium? Goddamn, writer that you are, Suzanne Collins.

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i fear the stunt with the milk is what made plutarch really believe that haymitch could pull off the explosion in the arena

he watched this 16yo down half a jug of milk because he knows the milk might save the president of the country's life. & he's like "oh! that's the one"

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It's the smallest thing maybe but it's funny to me Sunrise on the Reaping has given me another reason to dislike Gale.

Thinking of Madge on reaping day, wearing her nice dress and Gale giving her shit for it. Like she has a choice. Like she has say. Like it's her fault who she was born to. It's such an interesting example of class vs culture wars. This idea that the people up the road who have a nice house are the enemy and not the faceless people thousands of miles away who profit on their poverty.

Thinking of Maysilee who was very conscious of the way she dressed. Who liked looking nice and dressing up. Who is Madge's aunt that she never met. Who Madge heard stories of growing up about her moms twin sister who always loved fashion and knew the importance of masking and the power of how you present to people. Don't let them treat us like animals.

And when Madge lifts her head and says "I want to look my best if I go to the Capitol" and Gale has the audacity to scoff at her.

It also speaks to how quickly history is lost. He probably doesn't even know her aunt died in the games. Doesn't care. You never ever ever know what hurt people are carrying. What their history is. What their familial struggle has been. Don't punch down. Don't punch sideways. Don't even punch up. Break the chain and destroy the person holding the reins.

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Sunrise on the Reaping changes the whole game. Suddenly, Katniss isn't the chosen one anymore, or the only person who can make the capital pay for what they have done. She's just a girl with a long list of grievances, coming from a long line of people with even longer lists who have been trying to make them pay for years.

She finds her victory standing on the backs of hundreds or thousands of people who came before her. All pushing for the same goal, all guided by the same anger and grief and the need to go out on their own terms. The same things that caused Katniss to reach for the poisoned berries for her and Peeta in the first place.

When Katniss gives her "fire is catching" it echos the same purpose the districts have had for centuries; honour the dead, make the capitol take responsibility: Sejanus with the breadcrumbs, Reaper; who covered his dead with the capitol flag, Haymitch running with Louella to make Snow face what he'd done, Haymitch running again with Lou Lou, Katniss covering Rue in flowers, Peeta painting a mural of her for the gamemakers, so when the last stand finally comes she has all of her living allies behind her, but not only that. It's like Haymitch said: "Those 31 allies I boasted of to the head game maker? I can feel every one of them at my back"

She has every person who suffered at the hands of the capital, every person who was abused, every person who was reaped too soon, every person who died, standing at her back and in the end I think that's what gave her the strength to finish the fight.

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There's something really interesting about how the hunger games begins the day the cameras start rolling; reaping day, and closes out when katniss arrives back home, away from the spotlight. and then how catching fire picks up once again on the first day of the victory tour and the return of the cameras, and how mockingjay is largely told through the propos. One of the main theses of the series is the manipulation of media, so the framing of the vast majority of events through literal cameras is brilliant.

I also think this is why details are so sparse at the end of mockingjay, with katniss not even giving the reader the names of her children, as her life is her own again, fully, and she is completely out of the spotlight

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I love the fact that for the whole of TFC, everyone's like "It's so hard to get Andrew to do anything, he makes no sense" but barely 13% into TRK Neil figures out that all he needs is the choice.

Kevin won't make him play, sure, but he will diss his decision not to try until the cows come home, so Andrew tells him no. Nicky won't make him and Aaron get along, but he does try to bring them closer when he can without giving them much option. Absolutely nobody will wake him up without touching him, even though he's made it pretty obvious that a no-contact method would be preferred.

But Renee lets him be and only calls him out when he oversteps. Wymack gives him slack instead of tightening the leash, and Andrew knows it, so when Wymack asks something of him he delivers. When Neil figures this out he just quits trying to convince Andrew to do something and starts asking him instead. By halfway through TRK Neil can get him to do just about anything because he asks.

All Andrew needs is for his boundaries to be respected and nobody gets it properly until Neil and I love that so much.

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you ever think about how important keys are to neil and locks are to andrew and how they're also the only characters in the series shown to be able to pick them. because i do. im actually always thinking about neil liking having keys bcus it means he belongs somewhere and therefore doesnt need to pick the lock. im always thinking about how andrew needs locks to feel safe and how neil's respect of that boundary despite having the tools to cross it is the reason andrew even lets him in. im thinking about it.

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Dan attempting team bonding with the freshmen that turns into a drinking game of never have I ever to try to help the original Foxes and the freshmen find commonalities.

It almost immediately devolves into pointed pettiness.

One of the freshmen, being a little shit, smiles at Aaron while saying, "Never have I ever killed anyone."

The freshmen laugh, rubbing salt in the wound of Aaron's recent murder trial.

The laughter stops when Aaron, Andrew, Neil, and Renee (soda) all drink without missing a beat.

The freshmen look around at the upperclassmen nervously as they realize there are 3 more murderers than they expected in the room.

The freshmen do not sleep easy that night.

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giggling at the thought of snow watching katniss and peeta win the games under haymitch’s mentorship with lucy gray’s songs as their own personal soundtrack. every mockingjay that he could never control on one unhinged team, openly defying his rules and winning the public’s adoration in the process. absolutely insane.