i want aaron to smile. i want him to go to medical school and get his first apartment and live with katelyn and i want them to get an aquarium with a whole bunch of cool brightly colored fish and i want him to get to specialise in the area of medicine he wants to and when they're studying for their exams he and kate have post it notes of terminology and memorizations stuck all over the walls of their apartment. i want aaron to learn how to cook and learn what he likes what his comfort foods are i want him to have a dog, lily, that curls up at the end of the bed at night i want him to call nicky every week just like he promised i want him to have a little fox paw fridge magnet that katelyn got and he didn't object to i want there to be photographs in the hallway of his college graduation, of him and katelyn getting their puppy, of them getting engaged, getting married. i want aaron to get a job and love it i want him to be really good at staying calm when he's talking to his patients i want him and katelyn to drive to work together i want them to babysit kevin's daughter i want them to have date nights and see movies together and spend their anniversary at the beach where they got engaged. i want aaron to send pictures of his dog to the foxes' groupchat, i want him to smile when dan asks to dogsit for eternity, i want him to laugh at dinners with his colleagues, i want him to stay in touch with his friends from med school and spend birthdays with them. i want him to text andrew with just stuff about his life, pictures of birds he saw when he was walking lily that morning, i want him to be able to talk to his family without it hurting. i want aaron to get to life his life without being tied down by his guilt and his grief i want him to stop seeing blood when he falls asleep i want him to smile i want him to laugh i want aaron to breathe easier and start living instead of surviving
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.
The way Neil Josten switched into Nathaniel in order to process and handle the abuse and trauma of being found by his father's people and the reality of his looming death will never not fuck me up, he literally said I can't handle this but maybe the Butcher's son could. And then. And then!! The way those two versions of himself coalesce into Neil Abram Josten (legally recognised) after Nathan is dead and the truth is out? The Neil Josten we see in The Sunshine Court has all of the attachments of Neil Josten, the slow unraveling of family and care but all of the hard edges of Nathaniel, unflinching from the reality of the world he lives in and the decisions he has to make to keep his life. Nathaniel would never have stuck around long enough to care about Jean Moreau and call a hit out on his abuser. Neil would never have trusted those resources available to him (or potentially the trail it could leave) in order to deal with the problem in one brutal but efficient move. But Neil Abram Josten reforged could, would and did.
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.
Neil Josten is an amazing protagonist and here’s why‼️ first off he gets into the juicy stuff from page one! “Oh? Wanna hear about my dead mom? Sure! Why would I lie to myself when I can lie to everyone else?” Also ever read about a character being a bitch and you wanna jump their ass and tell them they’re a stupid bitch? NEIL JOSTEN WILL!! He will not hesitate to go for the damn throat. Abuser you wish would die? Boom he took out a hit on them. Character being a bitch? You know I get it. Also he sees problems and he fixes them‼️ bob the builder ass over here rekindling connections n shit. You see the twinyards and wish, damn wish they would talk to each other, well good for you Neil Josten is going to poke them with a stick until they do!! I just love Neil so bad can you tell…
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.
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 🚶
i hate people who know highways. “i’m heading south on I-65” okay man. i’m moving my rook to c2
just need to say that runner by alex g is so andreil coded it's crazy
"i like ppl who i can open up to, who don't judge for what i say but judge me for what i do"
"i laugh when you say the wrong thing, mouthing off to everybody else but you"
"yeah i have done a couple bad things (load it up, know your trigger like the back of my hand)"