Drunk - @rosekillermicrofic - Word Count: 99

I feel like the aftg fandom has just swung hard from one mischaracterization of Neil to another.

Yes, Neil is not an innocent little soft-boy like a lot of fans made him out to be pre-TSC, but he isn't some cold, calculated badass either.

He took out a hit on Grayson over Thai food. He doodles fox paws in his notebooks and hates vegetables. He insults FBI agents' parking jobs and he spent a bus ride staring over the back of his seat making heart eyes at his boyfriend. He manipulated the agents while eating takeout in the interrogation room. He canonically internally panics and overthinks the entire time he's attempting to manipulate anyone. He uses people's family trauma to manipulate them. He misses his mom.

Neil Abram Josten is a multifaceted character

another: who is richer, Jeremy or Neil?

one question: how rich is jeremy’s ass

follow up question: is he going to try and buy jean’s freedom from the moriyamas

Ronan: My kink is doing stupid shit and watching Adam speed run the five stages of grief as he realises he still wants to fuck me

idk why but i'm obsessed with this scene. like neil is smiling the butcher's smile and he knows he is, and tries to hide it !!!!

this is barty crouch junior in kill your darlings and you can’t tell me otherwise!!!

i have a problem BECAUSE HEARTBREAK HIGH X THE RAVEN CYCLE CROSSOVERS ARE MAKING ME GO FUCKING CRAZY AND I HAVE NO ONE TO TALK TO ABOUT THIS (this shit is full of shit and long, but hmo)

I am talking about Cash & Chook = Ronan & Kavinsky parallels, you see

Chook & Kavinsky are pretty obvious, i think. Both are from fucked up families, we can assume both are from families with drug problems and overall substance abuse. They both were kids whose fate was pretty much laid infront of them to follow.

Ronan and Ca$h, also pretty fucked up families, parents gone, not many people from family to lean on, choosing found families, choosing to get better. (word of the day) Also both, are connected to self harming in a way or another.

We also have the scene in HBH where Woodsy calls Chook by his real name (Michael Cooper) and Chook shouts

"That's not my name!"

I am aware this is very subtle and on the border of overanalyzing (and might just be the characters whose pov Kavinsky was told from) but not a single character in trc has called Kavinsky only by his first name (hear me out now)

Later on when Chook and Cash are stuck in the middle of the lake we get to know how Ca$h got his name, Chook saying that he gave Ca$h his name. So I can only assume Chook also gave himself a name. Maybe to be separated as a person from the person he was before.

How we get to Kavinsky is that maybe Kavinsky is all the same, separating his own persona from him by only using his family name.

Getting to other parallels, (now remember Ronan = Cash)

We don't know shit about details (whats that? never heard?) but we can assume.

Chook was the one who helped Ca$h before Nan was in the picture, gave Ca$h a name, a place, a family (more or less), a place to belong

Kavinsky offered all the same, obviously we know that there was some sexual attraction and tension and just Kavinsky pining. But Kavinsky asked Ronan to be one of his, offered Ronan a place to belong, where Ronan could shamelessly be himself. Kavinsky saw all of Ronan what Gansey didn't want to know and acknowledge, that Ronan could be the same as Kavinsky and is the same as Kavinsky, dangerous, destructive, the list goes on.

Ca$h, young Ca$h didn't have anyone else than Chook, but then he did. Then he did have Darren, Harper, Quinni, Amerie, all of them. There isnt such a difference. Kavinsky doesn't have anything else (worth staying for, it seems) but Ronan has Gansey, has Gangsey.

Chook had chosen his lifestyle, Cash even offered Chook that he could change too, Chook declined and said that its his shit. He chose his future.

Kavinsky, too, had chosen his lifestyle, or maybe either of them couldn't think that they could get away from it. He chose his fate, by not getting down and getting killed by his own demon. It was his shit.

So back to the lake scene, now paralleling the last dreaming day and 4th of July.

Let me put these two scenes here, first from TRC

---

The difference between us and Kavinsky, Gansey whispered in Ronan’s head, is we matter.

“You don’t fucking need him,” Kavinsky said.

Ronan released the parking brake.

---

Chook: Look can we stop fucking about please. You're one of us. So why don't we just cut the shit and get back to how things were?

Cash: You don't get it, I can't.

Both, at the end refused to get back to whatever it was they had, they chose to get better.

While Chook & Kavinsky didn't. (yes im repeating this because theres so so so so so many times Ronan offered a possibility to Kavinsky and Kavinsky didn't take it because he couldn't have Ronan anyway (Cash wasn't that hopeful and asked only once))

Now, there's (still the lake) scene where Chook talks about how it was "me, who took care of you, me who.. , me me me." and theres Kavinsky, who taught Ronan how to dream.

More lines !

---

Cash: I haven't been taken in by some other world. I just saw ours for what it was. And it made me sick.

--

Going to how Cash and Ronan both, realised that the world they lived/could've chosen is not good. Is the wrong way and leads to more harm than good.

To the last part.

Cash telling Chook that he'd rather be dead than come back to Chook, go back to the world he now despises, (or always has.)

There's the way that Chook breaks when he hears that. The blinks his tears away, nods, gulps, sniffs, turns away and grunts, spits, acting fine. Tries the boat again and says, "Guess I just needed to show it a bit of love."

Now I haven't been able to actually get full sense of that line yet, but theres a deeper meaning to that (which rlly fucking annoys me that i dont know) But theres also Kavinsky when Ronan leaves the new dreamt up Camaro, hitting air, turning around, threatening, his voice shifting, expressing his feelings with rage but still hiding them. Like Chook did.

I'm aware there's probably many stories like this with character's like these, but their actions too, their personalities (not Ronan and Cash so much but I can see a (canon) Kavinsky variant in Chook, both running around with their pack of dogs.)

Anyway if you're as fucked as me and read this through, lmk what you think, (i repeated the same things over and over again but spare me)

Sometimes family is a tired businessman, a punk catholic farmer and his magician boyfriend, a teenager with no internal organs, and two badass women who are legally the same person

fourth of july fall out boy is rovinsky and fourth of july by sufjan stevens is adansey thank you for coming to my tedtalk

everyone talks abt neil if he was "nathaniel" and a part of the perfect court but the REAL perfect court would have been:

riko moriyama (#1)

kevin day (#2)

nathaniel wesninski (#3)

jean moreau (#4)

andrew minyard. (#5)

LIKE !? the most insane lineup that uve ever seen. they would walk onto a court and be the scariest group uve ever witnessed omg?? and if they let neil and andrew play w the aggression the ravens were taught? they would be killing ppl on the court!

as an asexual who likes to imagine sex but doesnt actually like having sex, sometimes it just feels like sex isnt real but i wish it was. and post