You Just Don't Get Him Like I Do.

imagine you’re andrew and you’ve gone through almost two decades of struggle—over a dozen foster homes and therapists, juvie, abuse, finding out you have a long-lost twin, medically-induced mania, and are viewed as a heartless threat to society even by your own family.

and suddenly you’re struck by (or more accurately, you strike) some rando little runner from arizona who throws wymack’s offer back in his face just like you did. someone who hates cops and lies to feds, who respects your boundaries but still challenges you. someone who’s not a chain smoker like you but tolerates craves the smell. someone who, for all of his lies, is not as slick as he thinks he is. someone who sees you not as a threat to others but as a threat to yourself. someone with a killer’s smile who doesn’t flinch away from anything you throw at him. someone who bears the scars of surviving childhood and hides them just like you do. someone with so much passion for exy who sees your potential, not for his own benefit, but for yours. someone who doesn’t swing but sees you as someone who is worthy of care and protection and affection.

he’s so offensively perfect i would think he’s a pipe dream too.

redraw of iconic photo by james patrick dawson, and how are you coping with waiting for tgr??

yall need to put spoiler warnings at the top of ur post or smth I HAVENT READ TGR YET PLSSSS i have just seen the most devastating spoiler and idk if it's real or not 🚶

Neil Josten lets Andrew's his cigarettes burn to the filter without taking a drag. He hates vegetables. He knows all the places you can shoot a man without killing him. He doodles fox paws on his homework. He's not scared of knives or violence or the yakuza. He is scared of cellphones and therapists and his own reflection. His favourite colour is gray. He got told he couldn't play exy with a bloody nose so he sniffed back the blood until they let him. He doesn't like movies or loud music. He hitchhiked halfway across South Carolina by pretending to be a sociology student. He gets sad when Kevin watches exy without him. He wishes he had his mother's patience instead of his father's temper. He's brilliant at manipulation. He's stupid on purpose. He was every inch a lie but his friends made him into someone real. He doesn't wear a jacket to the roof when it's cold because he knows Andrew's body heat will keep him warm. He thinks the hardest thing he's ever had to do was opening a tub of ice cream after kissing his boyfriend and not like, all the torture he's been through. Nobody is doing it like him

i’m ready to admit it. jeremy being a fake blonde is extremely poetic and prophetic to the news that he’s not actually the faultless golden boy that he projects, but is, instead, human like the rest of us. and. can’t believe i’m saying this. i prefer it even! yeah, i said it.

I hate how the booktokification of the “unhinged woman” genre has completely reduced the concept of female rage to just “girlboss” without taking seriously how important it is to unequivocally portray female rage.

Throughout the history of literature, we’ve been given countless instances of women in despair and in sadness but save for a few writers (take Euripides, for example), we’ve rarely ever been given angry women who aren’t the villains or the foil for the perfect poised passive princess. Female rage has constantly been subdued and erased or warped into “she’s just batshit crazy” in pretty much every society.

And now that publishing and media marketing has reduced women showing rage in books to the “white hypersexual girlboss with a knife”, instead of uplifting the way women are allowed to have more dimension and sympathy in their visible anger than ever in literature, the media still isn’t taking this subgenre seriously.

thinking about kevin day winning his first olympic gold medal.

kevin day who appears to the media as a confident athlete who knows how talented he is. everyone knew the gold medal was only a matter of when he’d get it and not if he gets it— he’s the son of exy after all. they might have seen him a bit stiff in his earlier years and people did not forget about his class i exy interviews in which he confirms he had never been skiing or that the palmetto state foxes’ coach is actually his father— but he has always maintained that kevin day winning smile and his polite composure with the perfect amount of charisma.

but then the US exy team wins the final game at the olympics. it’s the first time he has won the olympic medal and when the final whistle fills his ears, he quite literally drops to his knees, he yells out in celebration, and then when he takes off his helmet he is crying. he has finally done it. he has won the gold medal which he was so determined to win ever since he could remember.

and most people do not know the extend of what he had to sacrifice for it. they don’t realise the extend of how hard he had to work to get back to exy after his hand got broken— both mentally and physically. nor do they know the amount of panic attacks he had to deal with and the same amount of times he had to drown his feelings away with a bottle or three.

and he’s crying. the fans cheer him on. and it’s not just the USA fans— but it feels like the whole stadium starts cheering his name in celebration and support. because at the end of the day that’s kevin day and he has finally done it. he has gotten the medal and it’s literally going to be a historic moment.

andrew makes his way to kevin’s side and he helps kevin take off his gloves like he has done many times before. andrew wants to say something, maybe a remark that will get under kevin’s skin— but then he looks at kevin’s expression and he realises this is all they’ve been building up to for the past years.

and it’s not just kevin who has won the golden medal right now. it’s him too. his team. their team. and they’re all a bit speechless and astonished by this moment. so andrew helps kevin up and neither of them say a word to each other just yet, but kevin feels andrew’s weight shifting into him too— they’re both leaning onto each other; they’re both holding each other up.

thinking about kevin day winning his first olympic gold medal.

kevin day who appears to the media as a confident athlete who knows how talented he is. everyone knew the gold medal was only a matter of when he’d get it and not if he gets it— he’s the son of exy after all. they might have seen him a bit stiff in his earlier years and people did not forget about his class i exy interviews in which he confirms he had never been skiing or that the palmetto state foxes’ coach is actually his father— but he has always maintained that kevin day winning smile and his polite composure with the perfect amount of charisma.

but then the US exy team wins the final game at the olympics. it’s the first time he has won the olympic medal and when the final whistle fills his ears, he quite literally drops to his knees, he yells out in celebration, and then when he takes off his helmet he is crying. he has finally done it. he has won the gold medal which he was so determined to win ever since he could remember.

and most people do not know the extend of what he had to sacrifice for it. they don’t realise the extend of how hard he had to work to get back to exy after his hand got broken— both mentally and physically. nor do they know the amount of panic attacks he had to deal with and the same amount of times he had to drown his feelings away with a bottle or three.

and he’s crying. the fans cheer him on. and it’s not just the USA fans— but it feels like the whole stadium starts cheering his name in celebration and support. because at the end of the day that’s kevin day and he has finally done it. he has gotten the medal and it’s literally going to be a historic moment.

andrew makes his way to kevin’s side and he helps kevin take off his gloves like he has done many times before. andrew wants to say something, maybe a remark that will get under kevin’s skin— but then he looks at kevin’s expression and he realises this is all they’ve been building up to for the past years.

and it’s not just kevin who has won the golden medal right now. it’s him too. his team. their team. and they’re all a bit speechless and astonished by this moment. so andrew helps kevin up and neither of them say a word to each other just yet, but kevin feels andrew’s weight shifting into him too— they’re both leaning onto each other; they’re both holding each other up.

*reading TFC for the first time*: so one them is dead but he was an assole and I didn't really care about him.

*rereading TFC*: he was the oldest fox, he had so much potential, yes he was an asshole but so are the monsters and he would've gotten along with Neil and I miss him so much 😭

The original percy jackson series is about cycles of abuse and neglect, right. Were introduced to percy as a kid who has clearly been left behind by a school system that has given up on him, restless and unengaged and self-defetist because hes been given nothing that works for him and no one even tries to meet him where he is. Then hes told no, listen, your neurodivergence is amazing and you just need to be given something that actually utilizes your unique palatte. And thats obviously the uplifting idea rick wanted for his kids, right. But once we get to know chb the same cycles are happening there too. There are kids "left behind" there too for one reason or another, because their parents dont want to claim them, because their parents werent important enough to get a cabin. Do you get it, all the kids who dont fit the most common neurotypes get shoved into the same closet. Kids are being left in a cruel world to fend for themselves without the tools they need. Theyre dying because no one bothered to accommodate them. Its such an obvious parallel that the first chapter introduces a teacher whos written to be especially hard on percys disability and she turns out to literally be one of these monsters trying to kill him. Meanwhile sally jackson tells him she named him after Perseus because she wanted a redemption for a hero whos story ended in tragedy. Meanwhile every book in the series replicates a greek myth step for step until the moment they break the cycle. Annabeth, playing Odysseus, is talked down from her hubris and grounded by her friends. Percy, playing Heracles, meets someone wronged by the original Heracles and rights his wrongs by refusing to go down the same selfish path as him. Monsters are reborn because they are--as the books explicitly call them--achetypes. These kids are stuck inside the cyclical nature of mythology because thats what happens to mythology, it gets retold over and over again. But these are the kids who have to live it. The series ends with percy being offered immortality and he rejects it because he wants to use his godly favor to force them to break their cycle of neglecting their kids. The series ends with a declaration that we cant keep letting this happen. The very first book offees the same choice. It ends with percy refusing to keep the head of medusa as a spoil of war, refusing his heroic reward. He lets his mother have the head and use it to kill gabe. Isnt that fucking crazy for a kids book? Gabe wasnt a Monster. He wasnt going to Turn to Dust and Disappear in a narratively convenient way. He was a living breathing mortal dude and percy and his mom killed him without remorse. Break the cycle of abuse!!!! Dont let this happen again!!! Anyway thats why the original percy jackson series is Hey where are you going with our breadsticks