gabi (she/they) || tired english major, perpetual doc wearer, avid fanfic reader, root beer connoisseur || i fear i have never been normal about anything ever || i love aftg, arcane, and spiderverse
94 posts
We all know that Neil has two smiles, his "Neil-smile" and his "Nathaniel-smile". I went through the books to see how many times Neil actually smiles, because god knows it's not that many.
His "Nathaniel-smile" pops up a few times, usually when he's around Riko, threatening someone, or daydreaming about his father's gruesome death.
"Are you threatening a federal agent?" Nathaniel smiled so hard his burns ached. "I wouldn't dare."
He smiles his normal or "Neil-smile" a total of eight times through the series. Never in the first book, twice in the second, and six times in the third. Out of these eight, four were towards Andrew, one to Kevin, one to Wymack, one to Nicky, and one to Matt.
Nicky subsided with a lightning-quick grin in Neil's direction. Neil managed a small smile back.
The original point of this post was that Neil really doesn't smile or laugh or anything as much as he does in fanfictions and stuff. Andrew and Neil are not a grumpyxsunshine trope, Neil is not the light to Andrew's darkness, they're both massively fucked up and Neil does his crazy serial killer smile more often than his regular one.
He couldn't sleep, but at least he could daydream his father's death over and over again. That was almost enough to make him smile, and eventually it thawed the chill from his veins.
Anyways, that šøš¢š“ the original point of the post, but now I'm stuck thinking about how cute it is that he literally smiles only eight times throughout the entire series, and š§š°š¶š³ of them are to Andrew. It's so fucking cute, especially when you consider the circumstances of the rest of them.
Andrew, who for once hadn't wasted their time denying that this thing between them might actually mean something to both of them. Neil hadn't even noticed the silence at first, too distracted by his dizzying thoughts. Now he couldn't help but smile and pull Andrew in.
He shares a tired smile with Kevin after the first Raven match. He smiles when Wymack picks up the phone when he calls him after he comes back from Evermore. He returns Nicky's grin with a small smile to reassure himself when Riko comes to watch their match against the Longhorns. And he gives Matt a tight smile during the final match against the Ravens.
"Neil?" All the gruff posturing left Wymack's voice; that sharp edge was all alarm. "Are you all right?" Neil smiled. It felt like it tore his face open. "No. No, I'm not. I know it's kind of sudden, but can you come get me? I'm at the airport."
With Andrew, basically every single time is directly š£š¦š¤š¢š¶š“š¦ of him. Those smiles are some of the only times he actually feels or shows genuine pleasure or happiness, and I just think that's so cute.
It wasn't funnyānone of this wasābut that response was so obnoxious and so typically Andrew that Neil couldn't help but smile.
Technically he does smile a ninth time, at all of the Foxes, but since that was immediately after and because of Riko's death, I'm tempted to classify it as a "Nathaniel-smile" lmao.
Neil looked from one tired face to the next, soaking them in, reveling in everything they'd accomplished tonight and imagining how they'd react when they heard the news tomorrow. "What's so funny?" Nicky asked when he spotted Neil in the doorway. Neil hadn't realized he was smiling. "Life?"
(Also the word smile no longer feels like a word to me now. I never realised how often Renee smiled until I had to go through every single time any character smiled in the books)
spring semester so horrible what do u mean its 75 out and im sposed to sit here and write this 12 page paper. i should be in the woods.
not that anyone asked but the way my brain works means that any time i read anything, i am piecing together every room, every house, and every space. i need to create an image in my head so i can see the characters in it and see how they interact with the space. except itās always vague and sometimes a throw-away line places a window or a wall where i didnāt think it was and i have to redo the entire space in my headā¦ā¦ itās a struggle but after so many times rereading aftg, i have a pretty solid idea
this is just a long way of saying i have decided to take whatās in my head and make it into reality and i have made floor plans for aftg lol
so far, i have done the foxesā dorm (both how i think the entire floor is laid out and each of their three rooms), wymackās apartment, and abbyās house. i plan on doing the cali places later, donāt even worry
of course tumblr is corrupting the quality but in my head there are five rooms to each side of the hall and the stairs are right next to the monsters' room. that stray white box is an elevator supposedly.... i had no idea how or where the elevator should be so i just kinda threw it there, don't laugh. and we know the soccer kids live on their floor so they have the rooms across the hall
i placed everything based on descriptions gathered from the first four books (thank you jean for telling us they do in fact have stoves even if they are just two burners). i gave kevin's desk an extra monitor to watch games on lol and andrew has to be by a window to smoke out of it. also, the beds are bunked. i know this looks big but it was hard to get the spacing right..........
for the girls, i mirrored the monsters' room because i know that piping tends to make apartments laid out so kitchens or bathrooms are back to back with your neighbors. they also get a fancy extra chair and a bigger tv bc allison is rich and you can't tell me their room wouldn't have the nicest furniture. i feel like dan would have the bottom bunk, renee the top, and allison the lone lofted bed but that's just me lol
we know matt and neil shoved their three desks by the windows and in my head, matt and neil's bunk is on the left while seth's lofted bed is on the right. and matt and neil have their dressers underneath seth's bed and his is by the window
this was actually interesting because we know that the front door is out of sight from the doorway of the study and that there are windows in the living room so i put in this turn to the hall. again, the space looks huge here but that's mainly because i didn't want to have to shrink and rearrange all the walls over and over again
abby's was the hardest by far. i went back and scoured the books for more information about her house because i was struggling and have struggled with it since my first read through. we know that there is a doorway to the kitchen (so i couldn't give her the open floor plan i wanted) and that the bedroom jean stayed in was just down the hall from the bathroom. i ended up giving abby her own master bath just because i felt like it but i have no idea if that is canon. and the hall bath seemed too large so i put in a laundry room randomly but whatever. we also know she has a two car driveway so i made the shape of the house a little funky. and in my head, during summer break aaron and nicky stay in one bedroom and andrew and kevin are in the other one. i put kandrew in the bedroom down the hall because it is farther from the front door and andrew would like that imo. that is also the bedroom jean is in after renee takes him from evermore. and of course she needed a huge dining room table to fit everyone
ANYWAY, if you made it this far i am surprised and thank you for entertaining this. i can also share all the passages i used to piece together these floor plans cause they are all bookmarked but that felt like too much to include here and i doubt anyone cares. feel free to debate wall placements in the comments, i would love to talk to you about it as you can probably tell
and if literally anyone is interested, i can and will make these in the sims and then they will be real cute and colorful floor plans. i will probably do it anyway for my own enjoyment but whether i post them is up in the air
pt. 2 pt. 3 (cali)
she renders me speechless actually
if you see her smiling, duck,,
yes, fem!neil for your eyes only
(got inspired by a tweet so go say thank you to that person)
Starter pack x aftg!
I might do Andrew and Kevin when I have the time :3
Trans fem kevin day!!!
i see fics all the time where neil and kevin are siblings with wymack as their dad but i never see kevin and dan as siblings with wymack as their dad. like dan is his daughter 100%, thatās his girl šā¤ļø
AND WHAT IF I SCREAM?!? AND WHAT IF I LOSE MY MIND!?!!? what then
you gave me a key and called it home.
SHFKSJFKSJDKS they look so perfectly feral, itās perfect
Angry baby
And lads and one abject bitch
some more wymack love today because him giving the foxes their second chances will never cease to mean the world to me
āI bet on losing dogsā and itās Wymack betting on the foxes, itās Wymack creating a team of fucked up kids to give them a second, third, fourth chance, itās Wymack never losing faith in them, itās Wymack supporting them without a question, itās Wymack never doubting them, itās Wymack patching them up, holding them together. ITāS WYMACK NEVER GIVING UP ON THEM.
every time someone draws fem Andrew and Neil an angel gains its wings and then gets given a thank you letter from god personally to pass on to the creators for doing gods work for them šš»
THIS IS AMAZING OMG they mean so much to me
CW: MCR :)
'Cause I love all the poison away with the boys in the band
Okay so this one is L O N G- Don't question the format I'm trying new things.
Aftg, it's been a while! Almost got a full playlist of song that would match aftg and that I would love to animate, unfortunately I have exams to pass (3rd year art school film incoming) so this is a kind of compromise.
i will forever support this and their friendship will never move into the circle of acknowledging it
Neil and Aaron are best friends actually; they just donāt know it yet
Kevin Day, rubbing his hands together with evil glee after jerejean get together: another successful relationship orchestrated by me on accident but Iām going to take credit for it anyways.
it would be stumbling fr but it would be so cute and they would figure it out together with so much sass and exy and care
i need fics of this right now
every time i reread aftg (the original trilogy) i forget how sassy wymack is and its literally amazing
here are some examples from tfc:
first line and heās opening with sass at a 10/10
i. love. him.
great one liner but the whole thing is hilarious
the way he just speaks over seth is everything lmaooooo
āwatch me beam with prideā im. dyinggggg
kicking kevin? š the colon??? iconic
the forming relationship between him and neil actually means the world to me
they def get weird tan lines during the summer because of their armbands which is part of why they keep them on all the time. neilās are more distinct differences in tan levels and andrewās are like burns that fade into barely tanned skin
I love how we as a fandom have just accepted that andrew is like pale pale and Neil is obviously white but tan. Like it just fits.
omg shut up, i believe that wholeheartedly. he absolutely diddddd
and your tags are everything
like this is literally canon i donāt care
every time i reread aftg (the original trilogy) i forget how sassy wymack is and its literally amazing
here are some examples from tfc:
first line and heās opening with sass at a 10/10
i. love. him.
great one liner but the whole thing is hilarious
the way he just speaks over seth is everything lmaooooo
āwatch me beam with prideā im. dyinggggg
kicking kevin? š the colon??? iconic
the forming relationship between him and neil actually means the world to me
yes yes yes exactly!! literally makes me giggle to think about. like imagine you play an exy game, drink copious amounts of vodka afterwards, and then your roommates do. not. let. you. sleep. all so that they can drag you and most the team to an annoying ass interview (your first in nine months) and you wake up after the bus ride there to your dad kicking you and telling you he doesnāt care about your complaints
he mustāve been a bit hungover and so tired and hereās wymack, sending him on laps up and down the bus so he canāt fall back asleep. i love them, wymack wouldāve been like this all the time if he was raising kevin
every time i reread aftg (the original trilogy) i forget how sassy wymack is and its literally amazing
here are some examples from tfc:
first line and heās opening with sass at a 10/10
i. love. him.
great one liner but the whole thing is hilarious
the way he just speaks over seth is everything lmaooooo
āwatch me beam with prideā im. dyinggggg
kicking kevin? š the colon??? iconic
the forming relationship between him and neil actually means the world to me
sorry to report but i will never stop being insufferable about neil and his bandana
little something bc Iām not posting a big piece this week
and while iām on the wymack train, can we please just take a moment with this passage because ohhhh my god
āNeil looked down at the key in his palm, at the security Wymack so easily and unquestioningly gave him. Maybe Neil wouldn't get any sleep tonight, and maybe he'd spend the next couple weeks waking up every time Wymack snored a little too loud, but maybe Neil really was okay here for now.ā - tfc ch. 2
the found family in this book never fails to warm my heart. because this is so so soon after neil came to south carolina and so soon after he met wymack, a man he is predisposed not to trust because of his age, and yet (AND YET) wymack gave him a key and neil knew he was staying, knew that he had a place there, a place to come back to, and it was enough for now
every time i reread aftg (the original trilogy) i forget how sassy wymack is and its literally amazing
here are some examples from tfc:
first line and heās opening with sass at a 10/10
i. love. him.
great one liner but the whole thing is hilarious
the way he just speaks over seth is everything lmaooooo
āwatch me beam with prideā im. dyinggggg
kicking kevin? š the colon??? iconic
the forming relationship between him and neil actually means the world to me
My canon: Neil is super weird, but in a way people don't expect and it catches them unaware. He will have a perfectly normal conversation with you and then you realise he doesn't ignore the first slice of bread of the loaf, uses it right after opening it to make a sandwich. He doesn't have a set way of replacing the toilet paper roll. He does sock-shoe-sock-shoe. He takes the peel of the banana off completely before eating it on the go. He unplugs the laptop yanking on the cable not the plug. He eats kiwis with the skin on like they're apples. He eats dry cereal then drinks a glass of milk.
Neil Josten is like an alien that has managed to blend in quite well with the humans but sometimes he does something that reminds you he's a martian
sometimes i think about just how much bleach damage renee and neil have accumulated between them and ik that allison runs the girl's bathroom like the navy to try and fix their hair. i like to think they're both reluctant and annoying about it too like she's probably so tired of their asses.
you can pry starting sentences with 'and' or 'but' out of my cold, dead hands
āAs soon as the upperclassmen parked and got out, Andrew pointed at Neil. "Look, one piece."
"Are you bleeding anywhere?" Matt asked.
"Nowhere vital,ā Neil said.ā - tfc ch. 6
HEāS LITERALLY SUCH AN INSTIGATOR I WILL NEVER GET OVER IT SHDKSJDKJSJD
like babe youāre not bleeding at all stfu (so so lovingly) you just know the upperclassmen donāt trust andrew, have your own tensions with him, and are turning his sarcasm around as your own to instigateeeeee
do you think andreil ever get their armbands wet when theyāre washing their hands? like iām sorry that would bother me so much, that sounds like such a sensory ick. they probably have to be a bit more cautious when washing hands. and like i bet washing dishes is even more of a challenge if they for some reason donāt want to take the armbands off
idk all i can imagine is neil accidentally getting them wet around his wrists and then having to decide where to take them off or deal with the sensation of partially soggy armbands
having autism is so annoying sometimes because tell me why i have not been able to enjoy listening to music all weekend
my brain wants the familiarity of songs i know backwards and forwards but nothing in my liked songs will satisfy the itch because theyāre not new but i cannot listen to a new song because i donāt yet know it but i can never know it without listening to it ughhhhhh