#aftg spoilers

[sai-ai67]

The memory of Zane turning his back on them with an impatient,“At least keep it down. I’ve got to be on court in two hours.”

Just know if Zane doesn’t have any haters I’m dead.

[changingtidesandtimesss]

[little2nerdy]

just saw a post talking about how important it was for drake to be killed with neil’s heavy racqet so that we would understand the gravity of riko trying to hit neil after the foxes won the final game, because riko also used a heavy racquet. like riko would’ve actually killed neil right there on national television, not just maim or injure, like dead.

[citricclown]

*stares romantically into ur striker's eyes*

[saywhatyouwillbut]

i’m sorry about kidnapping your boyfriend so we could give the fbi false testimony. yes, i tried to feed him, he thinks thai is too fattening and wouldn’t have any. i also put out a hit on his rapist

[sun-archeron]

THE SUNSHINE COURT SPOILERS

finished reading the sunshine court at 2am, so now here are some of my thoughts on it

im very glad that the romance between jean and jeremy isn't being rushed

but i am concerned on how much jeremy will learn abt the moryamas and moreaus, i feel like he isn't built for this,but for jerejean to work he has to know the truth

cat is now one of my favorite characters of the aftg universe, she's amazing

before, while i apreciated jean's role, i didn't particularly liked him, but now he's up there in my top 2 with neil

also, nora was not lying when she said jean and neil are very similar, i will have to reread the whole series soon so i can mark all the parallels between them

i'm very interested to see the evolution of cody's situationship with that couple (sorry, horrible memory, already forgot their names)

that scene with grayson gave me so much anxiety, wtf was that, i hope the hitman that neil hired makes it painful

and on that topic, neil was so iconic in all of his fifteen minutes of appearance, it was really nice to see him from an outsider pov, but i hope to see him from jeremy's pov in the future

wtf is going on with jeremy and his family?? babes if you want jean to open up you gotta lead by example, tell us what's going on

and renee being jean's "in another life" aaaaaaaaghhh, i didn't even care abt this ship before, and now they're making me suffer

[1200flowers]

the sunshine court spoilers here but:

I’m sorry I cannot stop thinking about “Now I am not safe with you, captain.” I just. Jean felt safe enough with Jeremy to tell him he felt unsafe in that scenario, trusting that Jeremy wouldn’t take advantage of or ignore his fear, trusting that Jeremy would respect his boundaries. Do you think Jean has ever exercised a boundary in the past three years? I don’t think so. I think that every time he tried at first, Riko would use that knowledge to hurt him even more, to deliberately cross them. I think that the boy who expects everyone to hurt him, the boy who says “Contrition, coach,” the boy who insisted he could swim while having a panic attack next to the pool—I think that boy tries so hard not to have boundaries because it’s safer that way. Because no one can exploit them if they don’t know what they are.

But he lets Jeremy know.

[litrallymadlad]

Visiting Neil in Baltimore or something HAHAHA

[cosmoshunger]

Anyway can we talk about “Hearing master from Jean had been hard enough; hearing it from his brilliant, unparalleled friend was a thousand times worse.” now. Is it time to talk about that line yet.

[pretty--in--purple]

Okay I’m awake again and something that really stood out to me with TSC was how different jean and neil are as protagonists. I expected they would be, but the thing I really noticed was how distinct their reactions were.

So, these books are HEAVY. There are many many traumatic events and the characters spend a lot of time in high-stress situations. Even when they’re not being attacked or threatened or XYZ, they’re often in a state of heightened physiological arousal (their sympathetic nervous system is going haywire). As a psychologist, the thing I find really interesting is that we see very different reactions that are all aligned with different adrenal responses, and I wanted to talk about it.

As a baseline, when your sympathetic nervous system is activated, you typically experience what some psychologists call the four Fs. Fight, flight, freeze, and/or fawn (some people use another word here but I don’t like it and think it’s less accurate to the situation). These can occur simultaneously or alone. And of the four characters who are most showing this response are the ones who are consistently in the highest stress situations, but who are also traumatised in such a way that even when they’re not actively in danger their sympathetic nervous system is overreactive and heightened.

So first off, we have Neil. He’s pretty clearly shown to have two responses: flight and fight. For his entire childhood, he’s been fleeing from danger and in the earlier parts of AFTG, we see this response - he tries to run as far as he can possibly get from anything that might be a risk. As a side point, this is pretty clearly a learned response from his mother. As Neil begins to feel more secure and his flight response is impeded (he can’t run away) we see the emergence of his other primary adrenal response - fight. I don’t feel like I need to explain this one, tbh, we’ve all seen how he runs his mouth. Fight is also typically shown when you believe you can defeat whatever’s threatening you, so I love what this says about how his confidence develops across the trilogy.

Then you have Andrew. He’s not a POV protagonist but I feel like his response might be the most obvious. His primary responses are fight and freeze (Andrew Minyard runs from/fawns for no man). Fight is pretty obvious - he’s a very violent person - but I feel like the most clear example of this is stopping Riko from attacking Neil. Andrew is obviously wired and his instinctive response is to protect. I love that for him. His other primary response, unfortunately, is freeze. Based on the most obvious time we see it (during Drake's attack), this is probably a response he developed as a child, before he felt strong/safe enough to fight back. God, these books make me sad sometimes.

Next is Kevin. He has a slightly more varied response - i can see the argument for him freezing, although i wouldnt say it's a primary response - but his main two responses are fight and fawn. Fight isn't necessarily literal, btw - the most obvious example is covering his tattoo. His fawn response is slightly more expanded on in TSC (mild spoilers if you haven't read that yet) when we see him responding to Riko's attack by begging first Riko and then Jean to intercede and stop the violence. he's trying to appeal to their affection for him, which is absolutely heartbreaking. Kevin i love you.

And finally, we have Jean, whose primary responses are only really made clear in TSC, although they are backed up by his appearances in the trilogy - freeze and fawn. We see freezing in Jean's response to sympathetic nervous system arousal, often from hearing about or recalling upsetting events/information. He closes in on himself and becomes unresponsive. Fawn is slightly more complicated, as we see it somewhat throughout AFTG. when he's loyal to riko and doing things he thinks riko will like in hopes of reducing any potential pain/threat he will experience, i'd call that fawning. an example at usc is him getting on his knees and handing coach rhemann his racket - he's not just submitting to punishment, he's trying to be helpful and well-behaved in hopes of lessening it. it's honestly a really strong response from him and it absolutely breaks my heart. jean in tsc is really struggling and i hope the last book brings him some peace. i also find it really painful that he's the only one of these boys without a fight response - he's never felt capable of winning against his abusers. i really hope the trojans and bee are able to help change that.

[overallsonfrogs]

My favorite thing about TSC is that this alternate version of 2007 has boba tea

Edit: okay so I’ve been told that there was boba in SoCal in the 2000s but there definitely wasn’t in rural PA (my hometown just got a boba place like 6 months ago) (also I was 8 in 2007)

[little2nerdy]

as an older sibling with a younger sister this tore my heart out

[fallenstarzz]

The brothers Johnson: A webweave

The Hellbound Heart, Clive Barker | The Sunshine Court, chapter six | Cain and Abel, Orazio Riminaldi | The Sunshine Court, chapter ten | The Plagues, The Prince of Egypt | The Sunshine Court, chapter sixteen | "whispers of your brother's blood", by tiktok user @user68519586 | Big Brother I'm Just Like You, Madds Buckley | The Sunshine Court, chapter sixteen | Way to You, Blixemi | The Sunshine Court, chapter fifteen | Antigone, Jean Anouilh | The Sunshine Court, chapter sixteen

[saywhatyouwillbut]

jeremy knox loser manic pixie rich girl of all time. regularly wakes up way too early. besties with his butler and a lesbian couple. waits for jean at the airport while failing to work a yoyo he probably bought on a whim. has familial issues he absolutely will not get into. bullies his crush into taking an honest-to-god ceramics class with him. gets his entire head bleached at the salon even though frosted tips would've been easier to maintain.

[queer-book-character-tournament]

you guys have the teamwork skills of the foxes pre Seth death lmao half of you are doing the high school musical we’re all in this together dance and the other half craves blood

[sun-archeron]

tsc spoilers!!

"did you think you were special?" WAS INSANE

stuart really said "i'm going to give this kid bad news in the worst possible way"

like,not only was it cruel, it was also unnecessary,even if he didn't care abt jean's feelings, he didn't need to go out of his way to be mean

anyway, still love him