He Did His Best Please Praise Him

Writers are scary because we’ll take personal trauma and think, "Hmm… what if this happened to my fictional characters but worse?"

My first post on Tumblr in all these years and it's just to say that I FELL IN LOVE with Kevin in tgr. I never really cared about him in the previous books but I got SO interested in him with all the info we got !!! And watching him from Jean's and Jeremy's pov was definitely the change (I love Neil, but I really needed to see the characters from an outsider pov)

Now I'm obsessed with Kevin and don't know what to do with that😭 guess I'll re-read all the books to focus on every single detail and then wait for Nora to feed us some more🥹🫶🏻 hope we see more of him in the 3book and maybe in some other book focused on him? I really NEED to know more about his childhood in the nest !!!! I NEED more about his relationships with Riko and Jean. I NEED MORE !!!!!!!!!!!

(And I really believe that he won't be with Thea much longer, I thought it was just wishful thinking but now I really think that he needs more life outside of exy/ravens? and I feel like Nora could follow that path. I can't imagine Thea changing her mind about the ravens, so I think Kevin will need some distance from her before actually recovering. He needs to process everything, his conversation with jean about trauma and riko made me understand a lot more about him. It actually made me starting to see him!! I didn't focus on him before but now... 👀)

rereading tkm and I sorely misjudged Kevin before tsc omg the line when Neil says you can’t be afraid of him anymore (Riko) and Kevin says

“It is not a switch you can turn on and off. You of all people know this. You did not grow up with him. You do not get to judge me.”

You’re so right Kevin. Like that line really hit me that most of the foxes and other people (including me initially) saw Kevin’s reluctance to fight back as cowardice rather than the instinctual self-preservation and trauma response that it acc is.

what do you mean the reason Kevin is alive is so he could keep Jean alive, Kevin didn’t kill himself so he could hold Jean to his promise

What? I’m not crying. My eyes are just leaking. It happens when i think about Kevin asking Jean to teach him French, about Kevin’s ‘I don’t want to lose you’, Kevin buying postcards and magnets for Jean when possible, about stupid, beautiful kevin defending Jean the best he could when he learned the hard way years ago not to speak up against Riko, about Kevin sometimes staying with Jean after, but often had no choice but distract the ravens from further hurting Jean by being insufferable.

About Kevin thinking and worrying about Jean when Kengo is dying, about Kevin trying to convince Jean not to return to Evermore even though the mere idea of defying the Moriyamas still terrifies him, about Kevin doing everything to ensure Jean got on Kevin’s favorite team because ‘their kindness matters’ and ‘some of them you like’ and because he wanted Jean as far away from West Virginia he can get because he knew how hard it was for himself to be just a state over.

About ‘breathe’ and ‘be careful with him’ and letting Bee use everything he told her even though he never trusted her enough himself.

About Kevin traveling to California to help Jean even though he has to drink to get through it, about ‘California agrees with you’ and about ‘Stay with me’ and Kevin dropping his media persona to protect Jean on television, about ‘the only brother i have left’ and ‘you’ve always known what i am’ and ‘so will you’.

About Kevin trying to talk about Riko with Jean, about Kevin convincing Jean to talk to Betsy, about Kevin seeing Jean enjoy something other than Exy and ‘I’m glad’, about Kevin seeing Jean kept the ruined postcards and immediately sending a new one.

OOOOH MY SHAYLA 😭😭😭

I have an insane need to see Kevin Day start healing in a way where his healing journey looks like him learning to do things on his own and be comfortable with himself. I want to see him start acquiring skills like pokemon that he just randomly breaks out one day and everyone is like ???? since when do you fucking ice skate Kevin wtf??? It's not that he's necessarily keeping them a secret it's more that he just does them. He learns to play piano. He starts doing things he wants to do, just to simply do them. He finds that life is in fact enjoyable outside of exy (but don't get it twisted it is still his life) but let Kevin Day fall a little in love with life after everything please and thank you

Shoutout to Jean dropping “stupid, beautiful Kevin” on us because he ate with that. That’s exactly what Kevin is, both stupid and beautiful. Amazing, descriptive, heartbreaking, straight to the point. I haven’t stopped thinking about it. Stupid, beautiful Kevin indeed