#I think that if you just demiss thea out of hand you're missing out on the chance to explore some super fun dynamics

[lucky-slice]

i don’t think thea groomed kevin. she didn’t even care abt him. she had her own fling and everything. HE had a fat crush on HER. according to this fandom that’s grooming. that annoys me so much. sorry had to get that off my chest. don’t ask why i had to do it here cus idk. how was ur day?

Hey. My days pretty good, bought a car so good things. And no worries! I'm open to any and all rants.

Yeah.... the groomer! Thea thing is a frustrating mess. I've definitely seen talk of it reduce lately, but that might just because I keep myself tucked firmly in a safe little Kevin Day obsessed corner.

It's entirely a fanon constructed idea based of a desire to demonize Thea's character, but there's no basis for it in canon. Until Nora dropped that little tidbit about how they first started talking, we had no idea how KevThea happened, and people took that as full permission to paint the only canon black character in the books as an abuser.

It's not uncommon in real life for freshman to date seniors and those relationships are not inherently predatory just because there's a few years age difference. There is nothing to indicate that Thea and Kevin even talked before Kevin joined the Raven's as a freshman. And additionally, it doesn't even make sense for what little we know about Thea's character in the original series. She is blunt, motivated, and entirely focused on her career. Why the fuck would she be wasting her time trying to manipulate an underage Kevin into being in a relationship with her?

It's unfortunate because I think their relationship is actually quite delightful. You're 100% correct that Kevin definitely had a big fat school girl crush on her (adorable and fantastic) and thea was just like - who the hell is this kid???.

(On a slightly unrelated note) I think we as a fandom need to chill a bit on the morality policing. A lot of the dynamics in aftg are a tad unhealthy and nuisanced. Even the holly grail of andreil has a scene where Andrew drugs Neil without a thought for his well-being or consent. But like the fun part is that characters are messy and you'll never get a perfect sparkling clean puritan relationship, you know??? So why can't we do the same with KevThea????