Bitchy Older Sister Allison And Bratty Younger Brother Neil Is Actually A Top Tier Dynamic

NEEEEED a scene of jean kissing jeremy against the bike. like they go on a little scenic ride and stop at an overpass. and jean just presses jeremy up against the bike and kisses him with all that hunger we know he has

Ugh..

has anyone ever said that this is a neil abram josten song…….

cause i mean look

And the blood of the man who killed my mother with his hand / Is in me, it’s in me in my veins

i don’t think these lines even need explaining. it’s him. it’s him and mary and nathan

So, touch my skin and tell me where you’ve been

to me, this feels like neil and andrew and their truths game. neil’s need to hear andrew’s past and to know his truth and the way their game makes him feel real

You showed me how to keep myself from burning out

and

You showed me how to hold my skin

neil learning to confront his truth and his lies and transform them into something real. andrew helped him figure out how to become something more than his lies and how to stand as himself instead of being a pile of lies that burns out and replaces itself with another fictitious person

I keep thinking my sunsent-time lighting is getting repetitive, but then i do pieces like these that end up feling kinda soft and i can't think of a better type of ligthing to give it that matches the vibe 😔

aftg floor plans pt.2

i know i said i would be making the homes in california next however that was actually just me pulling a neil josten so instead here are some more places from the first three books because i had their images in my head and moving chronologically called to me

perhaps most importantly is the monster's home in columbia. i am not sure if the books actually say this is a split level home but it makes sense to me and i have picked up on nora liking split level homes from multiple descriptions so that's what it is. we know nicky's room is on the first floor and so is the bathroom which means aaron and andrew are upstairs. andrew's room being second seemed right because its farther from the front door and because of the vague way my brain played out that scene of him coming downstairs before going to easthaven. not sure if i love that there's only one bathroom but we don't learn of a second one and i honestly don't think nicky could have afforded the jump in price a second bathroom would bring

okay. this one is painful. and for the record, i am sorry. but its mentioned so here it is. as you can tell i didn't want to or feel the need to fully fill in this house. i just added enough so that you can vaguely get the point and put labels for the rest. mainly i just did the kitchen, the back screened in porch where they ate, and that cursed bedroom. again, i am sorry. we're moving on to something more fun though don't worry

spring break cabin!!! this was so much fun, i cannot even begin to tell you. and okay, i know they were there for only a week so like what does it matter but it matters to me. this space is so cozy and caved out in my head that i just had to do it. the tan is the inside and the grey is the porch which we know to be in the back and on one of the sides. ignore how i didn't really put anything on the porch... i was kinda stuck beyond the hot tub. but this place is hugeeeee like oh my god. we have the large living room around the fireplace, the ginormous kitchen, the cute back room that is mentioned to have pool and foosball, and of course, our favorite, the bedroom neil and andrew stay in. ngl i struggled a bit with that bedroom's layout but this is what we ended up with

okay, second floor. according to neil, the four upstairs bedrooms are placed in each of the corners which made it a bit difficult and definitely interesting to do. because of this, i gave two of them a jack and jill style bathroom. in my mind, it makes sense for the two bedrooms sharing a bathroom to be given to nicky, kevin, and aaron. i think kevin being the drama queen he is would get his own and nicky and aaron would share but honestly aaron could be with either. and of course matt and dan are together and allison and renee are in the last one. each room has a door to the wrap around porch but it made sense to me for the open areas to have access too. and speaking of the open areas i made one a mini lounge because apparently there are multiple fire places and i had to put the second one somewhere and the other has desks because i didn't put them in any of the rooms. i mean it is a vacation home, why would they need desks in their rooms?

i swear i will actually do the cali homes next. i have sketches of them in my notebooks but haven't fully fleshed them out online like the rest. but they exist and i have already scoured the books to piece them together so hopefully it won't take ten years but then again, it is finals season and i have so so many essays to do so we will see.

oh and, i have about half of wymack's apartment done in the sims and while it's a struggle to be era accurate, it's very cute and fun

pt. 1 pt. 3 (cali)

AND WHAT IF I SCREAM?!? AND WHAT IF I LOSE MY MIND!?!!? what then

you gave me a key and called it home.

neil's learned obliviousness

gearing myself up to write another essay about neil josten. the grind never stops. had to figure out why people making neil super clueless and oblivious always rubbed me the wrong way even tho it's technically canon so here it is.

ok so i have a lot of thoughts about neil and obliviousness but i'm gonna mostly condense them into this single thesis statement: neil only pays attention to and notices things he deems important.

we've been knew atp that neil has insane tunnel vision, and that often comes across in his narration. because of this, it's easy to assume that neil is just genuinely very clueless and oblivious when it comes to social interaction and also romantic relationships, flirting, etc.

i know nora herself said that neil wouldn't realise if someone is flirting with him because he's dense as a brick and while i appreciate the comedic value of socially oblivious neil i generally take this characterisation with a grain of salt because it very quickly leans into territory of neil being just generally dumb and inept, which i lowk can't stand because it sanitises and declaws neil a lot and makes him boring and stereotypical.

so i raise you this: neil's obliviousness (if you want to call it that) throughout aftg and in his narration is deliberate. mostly, i think it's all intentional. he literally intentionally refuses to notice or give attention to certain things. and because of his relentless focus on only a couple of things (exy and his survival), things like socialising and relationships get put on the backburner unless they relate to the two aforementioned things.

let's dissect it using examples.

nicky's flirting. neil's narration is pretty clear-cut when it comes to this. he doesn't demonstrate much confusion towards nicky's behaviour except that he doesn't really know why nicky's more interested in him than exy. crucially, he isn't confused about why nicky demonstrates an interest in him (which is because he thinks neil is hot), he's just confused about why nicky is investing energy into flirting with him when, in his mind, there are better things to be doing. it seems, at least in his narration, that he knows nicky is flirting, he just doesn't know why and also doesn't really care to focus on it. aside from an initial discomfort/expression of disinterest, neil doesn't linger on nicky's comments and flirtations for the rest of the series. he narrates it when it's relevant but doesn't make any additional internal comments towards it because it doesn't pertain to his two priorities: exy and survival.

marissa's flirting. i feel like there's two ways to interpret neil's response to marissa's advance "i can give you my number". neil says "what for?" and you can either take this as genuine confusion or just neil kinda being a dick. i lowk never considered the first option and just jumped straight to "neil doesn't really care about hurting this girl's feelings" lmfao. i think i'm right tho, because he elaborates and makes it clear he isn't interested in pursuing relationships outside of the foxes (see: priority no. 1, exy) and when nicky and dan comment on it, making it explicitly clear that marissa was asking neil out, neil doesn't express any confusion over what she was trying to do. people who write neil being genuinely exaggeratedly clueless when being flirted with need to remember that neil wasn't unaware of marissa's intentions during this scene, he was just so aggressively disinterested that he failed to remark on most of it. he never expresses any actual confusion or obliviousness about her flirting.

andrew. ok look. this is gonna require some explaining. first of all let's talk about andrew's attraction to neil on a purely physical level. their nothingship era, if you will. neil's dizzying whiplash during the "that doesn't mean i wouldn't blow you" scene is honestly pretty understandable. like really, who wasn't surprised during that scene? the hints in the previous books about andrew's attraction towards neil were so subtle that most of us readers had to reread a couple times to actually catch the progression and build-up. and also, andrew was high and manic for most of the first two books, so it's understandable that neil probably chalked up a lot of andrew's yapping and odd behaviours to the drugs, rather than a genuine expression of andrew's feelings. that's not to say he discounted the things andrew told him, but since he's always taken andrew at face value, he also didn't doubt andrew's "i hate you" and supposed dislike of him. i think it's actually very very understandable that neil didn't pick up on andrew's attraction to him because 1. why would you ever assume that about anyone anyway 2. neil is pretty preoccupied with being hunted down by his serial killer father and the japanese mafia 3. andrew was NOT making it easy on neil at all. this is partially because andrew himself wasn't ready to face the reality of his feelings for neil and also just his general confusing way of going about things. it makes a lot of sense that even neil, who's generally good at reading andrew and picking up on his hints, would miss whatever hints andrew was dropping about this, if any. and finally, 4. andrew wanting to fuck neil doesn't have anything to do with exy or survival, so neil instinctively filters it out and doesn't think about it a lot. next, i guess we have to talk about andrew's actual feelings for neil. again, we like to make fun of neil for never picking up on the fact that andrew is in LOVE with him during their situationship phase. but again, i think it makes a lot of sense? yes, andrew wasn't exactly subtle about it by a certain point (see: baltimore reunion) but also, neil has literally been pavloved to reject romantic relationships. one of the ways he "justifies" his nothingship with andrew is by assuring himself that andrew is only physically attracted to him. and the other justification is that he sees andrew as intertwined with the idea of his survival, because of the deal they have. keeping andrew close and being in a relationship with him is directly related to his own safety and survival. because neil's lowk manipulated his own thinking to associate andrew implicitly with survival, suddenly their relationship is a lot more prioritised in neil's mind and narration, because it pertains to priority no. 2, survival. i truly, truly believe neil's refusal or inability to see andrew's actual feelings for him is deliberate. he doesn't want to notice that andrew actually is in love with him because that is area he isn't familiar with and he doesn't want to hurt andrew when he dies. but because he obviously does want to continue this little "nothing" with andrew, and because he associates andrew with survival, he's unwilling to let go of him. so he just refuses to notice and remains deliberately oblivious to andrew's feelings for him. it's all very psychological.

final argument: people like to make fun of neil for not realising his own feelings for andrew but listen. he does realise. he never says that he doesn't feel anything for andrew. he never denies being in love with or attracted to andrew, not even in his own head. he registers, literally in trk, after his conversation with nicky, that he sees andrew differently and could be developing feelings for him, but he literally forcibly pushes the thoughts away because they would distract him from priority no. 1 (exy) and priority no. 2 (survival). he also notices in the back half of tkm that their nothingship has taken on new weight and means more than just "nothing" but he avoids acknowledging it with andrew even when he's aware of it in his own mind. so yeah. neil isn't in a state of denial. like at all.

also, neil does notice things when they pertain to his priorities. like, he picked up on jeanee the same way kevin did. he noticed literally in trk the way jean reacted differently to renee, but he only chose to acknowledge and mention it out loud when he could use it to his advantage. and it did work out in everyone's favour, because he brought it up with kevin, kevin gave renee jean's number, and that's how jean was able to escape the nest and survive the year. so, lbr, neil isn't as clueless and out-of-it as the fandom likes to make him. he can be very perceptive and socially aware when it pertains to his narrow-minded priorities.

ok at the end of the day, i can acknowledge: it is not that deep. if ppl want to make neil super oblivious and clueless and socially inept, it's not rlly a big deal. i just personally hate when they dumb neil down when he is honestly such a smart and perceptive character and his intelligence is actually such a huge part of the series. so anyway. i hope u enjoyed this essay, it's been a while so it's a little rough.

was out all day today and got home feeling like i needed to power down like a machine and not exist for a while so i just thought about jerejean for the past hour and now my brain doesn’t feel like it’s dissolved

finishes an essay just to have to write another finishes an essay just to have to write another finishes. an essay. just to have to write. another. eughhhhhhhhh

texted a reader friend about nora’s announcement and she was so excited for me even though she hasn’t read aftg and the news doesn’t mean anything to her outside of me being happy <3 the enthusiasm all friends should have