theseyellowdays

[theseyellowdays]

every time i reread aftg i am struck again by how much of a support system andrew minyard has & i think that’s such an important part of his character. betsy, renee, and wymack all have distinct roles in his life, and he actively seeks them out when he knows he needs them—when he needs a fight, he asks renee to spar. when he needs to get away he goes to wymack’s. when he needs to talk to someone (or maybe just for someone to talk to him, idk what their sessions are like) he turns to bee. andrew takes his healing seriously! he has found people to trust!

[theseyellowdays]

Do you think Nicky ever saw Trojans and wished it could have been him? And then immediately felt guilty because that would mean regretting taking in the twins.

Do you think Jeremy ever saw Foxes and wished he went there, so he would have no expectations from people around him, understood and far away enough not to hurt his family? And then immediately felt guilty because that would mean he didn’t deserve what happened to him.

[theseyellowdays]

friendly reminder that according to the ec, aaron was already in wymack's radar before he found out about andrew. he had been watching aaron's stats (he was a top ten backliner. top. ten) for four years (four) before he was even aware of the other twin

[theseyellowdays]

i think one reason why so many people fail to understand andrew and neil's relationship is because people don't know what it is to be aspec. and obviously the aspec umbrella is wide and varied and no one size fits all, but at the heart of their relationship, neil is demisexual. and i fully believe andrew is some form of aromantic. and obviously their shared history of trauma (of all kinds) colors their relationship and their sexualities and actions. but aspec people (and the people in relationships with those aspec people) develop such different relationships than allo people. they care differently, and it's often the care that becomes most important, rather than (just) the attraction. like yes, i choose you because i see you because i am interested in you because i don't quite understand you but i want to, i need to, and i am committed to sticking around regardless of whether we are a legal partnership or not.

people argue all the time that andreil would grow to say i love you some day, that they'd eventually heal enough to get married, but that isn't healing. that's ignoring a vital part of each of them. not only are they both still learning what love is, but love is not what their relationship is built around. they did not ~FaLl In LoVE~ they built a partnership around taking care of the other person. sure they were attracted to each other in their own ways, but andrew doesn't look at neil like he's his happily ever after romance. neil is the person who wants andrew to live, who wants andrew to be happy, who wants andrew to know that he has value even when he's not a good person. and andrew is the person who wants neil to be safe, who wants neil to be happy, who wants neil to know that he has value even when he isn't playing exy. their "romance" comes from holding each other up, from calling each other on their shit, from being a safe space when the world has proven it is anything but. neil is the one who almost starts to imagine some kind of long-term partnership in such conventional terms and andrew is so unconcerned with what that partnership looks like...he just knows the two of them will continue holding each other up as long as they can. and sure they'll have sex and sleep in the same bed and get cats together and all that "romantic" shit, but it's more than romance. it's a life. it's security. it's a chance to rewrite the trauma of their pasts.

and yeah to an outsider all that is romantic, sure. but i don't think andrew and neil see it like that. their relationships is all facts and truths. they feel safest in these absolutes, in the trust they are building together, in the shared language they are crafting between tentative touches and long stares. but to label it something as banal as ~romance~ undersells just what's happening to them. they don't need to say i love you because they know that all of these pieces that make up their shared life together say that for them, and they wouldn't know what to do with those words anyway. their "love" is not the same as other people's anyway. they don't need to get married because anniversaries and dates and marriages minimize just how long forever is, and they are already joined together by the understanding they share.

if the two of them got married or started "dating" it would send the wrong message to people who will never understand. neil isn't andrew's ~boyfriend~ he's the man who convinced him that life can interesting enough to stick around for. andrew isn't neil's ~lover~ he's the man who refused to let him run away from the life he always wanted. it's not romantic, it's survival. it's selflessness. it's learning how to care for yourself by caring for someone else and letting them care for you.

[theseyellowdays]

“The rules have changed.”

[theseyellowdays]

Still expecting Jeremy Knox to have some "How to get away from your toxic/rich/influential/exy hating family" classes,by the expert herself : Allison Reynolds

[theseyellowdays]

good luck to kevin who has to deal with a non-smoking andrew and a sidelined neil 🫡

[theseyellowdays]

Can we talk about the attack on the Foxes and exactly how many triggers that's going to set off?

How much do you want to bet that Lane swung for Neil's ribs first because he'd mouthed off in the interview and revealed that Jean had had broken ribs? How long until Jean puts it together and blames himself for the fact that he and Neil now share matching rib fractures from the Ravens? (Neil doesn't care. He'd do it all again).

Andrew has a broken collarbone so bad it needed surgery, and he's going to have to wear a sling for several weeks. He's immobilized and unarmed (literally if he can't wear a knife on his injured arm. A knife in the armband of his working arm would do nothing because he can't draw it with one hand). And Andrew has an immense fear of being too weak to defend himself, especially with a broken bone to make him a target.

Kevin. He's finally grown a spine and this is the first time we see him literally fight the Ravens. He throws hands in defense of his Foxes, and Neil in particular, when Kevin from a year before would never have. But he saw Andrew, his protector, his shield, the man he promised he would make Court, with a hand dangling limp and useless at his side thanks to a broken bone. How many hours did it take before they got Andrew into an x-ray and saw that it was fixable? How long did Kevin stare at Andrew's limp hand, memories of Riko and his own broken bones going through his mind?

Allison was off the court, but that's the part that's going to kill her. Only she, Renee, Nicky, and the freshmen were off the court, but the freshman don't count. Allison had to watch through plexiglass walls as her team was hurt, unable to do anything to help, and she probably thought how many times is this going to happen? How many times am I going to be sidelined while my friends are hurt? how many times will I be useless in protecting them from the Ravens? (It's been one year since Seth died. Since Allison let him go out and lost him and she's never stopped wondering if things would have gone differently if she had been there that night.)

Nicky is also stuck outside the plexiglass, watching as Andrew is the first to go down. He remembers Andrew fighting for him outside Eden's, remembers how Andrew never regretted defending Nicky even when it got him put on those hated meds. And he can't help but feel like a useless guardian because he wasn't there when Andrew was attacked at Thanksgiving (he was the reason Andrew was in that house) and he isn't there now. All he can do is watch.

The Foxes have a long road to recovery and they've definitely survived worse. But with so many old scars torn open, this year might be just as rough as the last

[theseyellowdays]

“I can still hear him. Can you?” Kevin asks. Because Riko is a ghost he can’t shake. A voice in the back of his head telling him he’s second best. Convincing him that everything he has he’s stolen from the brother he put in an early grave. It’s the cruel reminder the queen chess piece on his face was first a number 2. Cover it all he wants, it will still be there. Riko is dead but he’ll never be gone. He haunts Kevin. And Kevin needs to know if Jean’s being haunted, too.

[theseyellowdays]

are we on trial? | a glimpse into the night before andrew testifies

Nausea squeezes his stomach like a noose and Aaron wills the tequila to slide down his throat instead of coming back out. Katelyn’s fingertips scratching soft patterns along his scalp is the only reason he succeeds. 

“You sure you don’t want to sleep?” 

She has asked this too many times now—first when Dan and Matt were still here, then when they left and Aaron picked a movie without looking from Matt’s endless collection, and again when he got up from the couch for more of Matt’s alcohol. On any other night Aaron would tell her to quit it, but tonight he can’t. Tonight the sound of her voice is the one thing keeping him tethered to some semblance of sanity, even if it is to ask the same question again and again. 

Aaron shakes his head in a silent no. He knows what sleep will bring. Red hands and scarred wrists, his brother sitting in a pool of blood, Aaron’s-reflection-Andrew trapped in a mirror touching his temple, the sound of Andrew’s maniacal laughter chasing him out of his own head until he thrashes awake in his bed. He’d rather spend the night wide awake putting poison in his body.

Keep reading

[theseyellowdays]

hey how stressed do you think andrew was about being put under anesthesia for his surgery. how badly do you think neil knew he didn’t want to do it. do you think he tried to argue against it. do you think neil kept a creepy eye on everybody who entered andrew’s hospital room and doubled down on telling his medical team not to touch him after andrew said not to touch him and they insist that they have to. do you think neil waited in his room until the moment they had to take andrew into surgery. do you think he was so restless that he bounced his knee while they waited in the waiting room. do you think he was the first thing andrew saw when he woke up and do you think andrew was relieved. do you think andrew wanted to smoke but used this as a reminder for why he can’t let himself anymore

[theseyellowdays]

You ever think Andrew’s like, folding laundry in his apartment with Neil, throwing socks into their shared drawer because neither of them give a shit about socks, and then he has to pause because…he’s folding laundry.

For him and his boyfriend. Who are both adults with like, health insurance and shit. They say shit like “let’s go home” and “what’s for dinner?” Nothing is separated in their dresser except for workout wear because they need different size compression gear. They have matching jackets in the closet and pictures on the wall. They kiss each other good morning, and hello. They grocery shop. And suddenly Andrew’s nicotine gum is heavy in his pocket, because he stopped smoking so he’ll never be too out of breath to reach Neil.

Andrew has to stop to feel his heart, as if folding t-shirts was running a marathon, because he didn’t think he’d last this long. He didn’t think this was possible.

So Andrew sits in their apartment and feels.

[theseyellowdays]

everything aside tho, I can't get over the fact that this is the first time jean has been so vocally protective of neil in front of someone else. and the person he chose was andrew, the person who mirrors jean's misplaced connection to neil, the foxes' number 3, the partner neil chose for himself when he escaped the life where jean would have been chosen for him.

[theseyellowdays]

“Tell me the phrase”

I haven’t drawn fan art in like 8 years but Jean was so insane for this I couldn’t help myself.

Thinking of doing a collection of quick sketches like this from scenes in TGR so if anyone has any requests lmk ❤️

[theseyellowdays]

Having read the golden raven, I wanna talk about the financial iron grip that Jeremy's mum has on his life. His finances are so thoroughly scrutinised that he doesn't dare get a cab back from a hook up. He is immediately contacted after paying for Jabberwocky to justify the expense, and because all his purchases also require receipts, he can't even do the age old cash back trick to get some untraceable money (where you buy 20 dollars of groceries and get 10 dollars of cashback so it looks like 30 bucks of groceries but you got 10 bucks to spend or save privately). Instead he has to basically launder money through his therapist. Which btw kid you could use weekly sessions and your therapist has only agreed to this because your mom has - listen I can't even get into all that. That's a seperate post. Anyway my point is that Jeremy is being financially abused by his mom (and that's before we get into the fact she's hidden his passport etc), and that noone will ever believe it because he is from a rich family, he has a credit card and does expensive things like go to a salon for his hair etc. He is being spied and controlled via his finances and there is so much to say about Jeremy and Jeans parallels at being property who cannot leave or live their lives as they choose. But tbh Jeremy being forced to law school and Jean having no choice but to keep playing exy is also a seperate post

[theseyellowdays]

andrew locking aaron in a room with canned food and nothing else for days to get him clean and get his life on track vs bryson shoving a bottle of highly addictive pills in teenage jeremy’s hand, leading to complete derailment of jeremy’s life and their little brother’s suicide… are you your brother’s keeper or are you your brother’s killer…

[theseyellowdays]

me when Kevin said this to Jean:

“You’re Queen of the US Court—for now. How long can you hold it when you’re drinking poison?”

​“Always,” Kevin promised. “The last person who tried to take it from me died. Checkmate.”