#i understand not wanting to hurt nora sakavics feelings by asking her about this

[dayurno]

this is somewhat of a vent post & something i said i would not do again but has been plaguing me enough that i think getting it out might feel better. so. has anydoggy else been. Baffled and upset by nora sakavic’s refusal to speak on how terribly aftg has treated its characters of color? with the author of the series coming back with a new book and starting up on her online activity again, and questions of what she’d change about aftg bubbling up, it’s particularly glaring to me that we are all playing this very long game of pretend where we ignore how badly the non-white cast has been treated & her lack of thoughts on it

and i understand not wanting to bring up nicky and thea because people pick on her for it. i’m not trying to discredit nora sakavic’s terrible history of getting harrassed online by aftg fans. but i think it is very cynical, and it is very juvenile, and most of all very cruel, that she gets to ignore the very real ways the books have set up these characters to be hated. i think it’s obvious why the characters who get the most hate are the only canonical characters of color, and i think we do not get to treat this like a deliberate decision on the fandom’s part when the books have put these same characters in degrading and embarrassing and terrible positions in the first place. aftg is not a story about nice characters with clean pasts, but there is a very specific nastiness to the only characters of color being a brown man who sexually harasses and later assaults the main character, a black woman whose only scene is her lashing out at her love interest after being ignored for the first two books, and the japanese villain who gets maybe two lines of complexity before he goes back to being a terrible person. the white cast, in comparison, while not at all free from flaws, are never shown to commit mindless evil; all of their actions are ultimately justified. the book goes out of its way to give them concession after concession. we know exactly who to side with, because aftg tells us who these people are. does nicky’s assault ever get addressed in the books? does riko’s reasoning to be the way that he is ever gets more than briefly aluded to? is thea reserved even a shred of humanity or grace in her one scene?

anyway. it’s been years of talking about this and the fandom has been constantly hostile to criticism in this regard, and more recently any criticism at all, and it’s Grating to be on the other side of this discussion. it’s exhausting to know that in ten years we do not get even an acknowledgment besides the author saying she will not answer questions about nicky and thea anymore. it’s upsetting and it’s ugly and i wish no one had to talk about this again, but we do because what i thought was common sense has been washed away by a sudden influx of no-nuance adoration for the trilogy. basically i hope we all explode

two hours later edit: you're allowed to reblog this! sorry about the confusion

[c-valentino]

Splashes Of Paint

Fandom: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic

Rating: T

Characters:

Kevin Day, Betsy Dobson, Riko Moriyama, Andrew Minyard, Aaron Minyard

Warnings:

past abuse, anxiety

Summery:

After joining the Foxes Kevin has a hard time to adapt. Bee suggest painting as an creative outlet for his restless energy. Reluctantly, Kevin picks up the brush to fill the gap until he can join his new team. His paintings get a little more attention than he had intended... 

A three part story about Kevin as an artist, Andrew as his keeper, and Riko as an unexpected visitor and shadow from the past... 

Chapter One - Old Sheets of Paper

“Do you like History, Kevin?” The striker looks up, pulled out of his memories, back into reality. He is sitting in Bee’s office. It’s their third session together. In front of her lie his old school records, provided by Edgar Allan for his transfer. History? Oh… academics.

“I suppose.” He can’t find the energy to get enthusiastic these days, though his resources of nervous, restless energy seems to be endless, his anxiety levels rising, and his frustration limitless. His left hand is trapped in a cast, has become a useless, foreign thing attached to his body. My body is a temple, my body an instrument, my body is a weapon… —well, not anymore.

“I read your essay on the great conquerors and their desire to leave their mark humanities collective memory. Quite inspiring, well written too, but your teacher… a Mr. Collin? Dr. Collins —he didn’t share my opinion, it seems.” Dr. Collins has been his History teacher at Edgar Allan. Kevin believes Collins hates everyone among the living, but is wildly fascinated by old, dusty tomes and artifacts. How annoyed he had been when a young, bright-eyed student came into his office one day to get some advise on his new assignment. Outside his teacher’s office hours —the audacity of the young man! A B minus had been no reason to file a complaint, even though his essay deserved better.

“He and I didn’t have a great start,” Kevin shrugs. Subjects like History never had great importance at Edgar Allan. He fidgets in his seat, his right leg bouncing up and down in an endless rhythm. He notices but can’t help it. He wants to go out and play Exy. Kevin misses the feeling of his racquet in his hands, the familiar weight of it. Will I even be able to hold it again, he wonders, a shadow falling over his pale features.

“Well, maybe you will get along better with your new teacher,” Bee says and smiles kindly.

“Maybe,” he replies vaguely. Doesn’t matter, he thinks. How long has it been since his last time on the court? He can’t bear to think about it, but he needs to know. His skills are getting dull. All those endless hours of drills and training —all going to waste. How many hours will he need to put in to catch up again? Could he cut back on studying and sleep to get some extra hours of practice in each day? Eight hours of sleep had been mandatory at Edgar Allan, even though reality always looked a little differently. He can survive on less sleep, Kevin supposes. In the beginning, he could cut back to four hours of sleep each night; at least until he gets back into shape and can hold his own against the new team again. The Foxes… what a bunch of misfits. One problem kid after another. No, not kids… not anymore.

“I like these,” Bee pulls him back up again, and Kevin blinks a few times, frowns at the pictures she is holding in her hands. He cringes. Why did they include these? His old drawings. Why would his old Art classes matter?

“Yeah? Thanks.” He means it in a ‘oh thank you, can you put these away now?’ kind of way, forces a smile.

“They are good. You have an eye for detail.” She looks at another one, a pencil sketch, and then another —a still life of an Exy ball and a glove of all things. Kevin feels the embarrassment, but it’s not enough to make him blush, it only makes him stiffen and fidget some more. “Have you thought about what you want to do in the meantime until you are cleared for practice again?” She meets his eyes, still smiling her kind smile. He sighs and looks away first, out of the window. His mind comes up blank.

“Study, I suppose,” he answers lamely. “Catch up with some school stuff.”

“Do you need to catch up in any of your subjects? Edgar Allan provides a solid education, does it not?” Yes, it does. It forces all required skills and every bit of relevant knowledge onto its students in a very harsh, uncompromising, yet dull form of education. Repetition, repetition, repetition… Repetitio est mater studiorum, is written on the wall of the main entrance hall. Repetita iuvant has been one of his Math teacher’s favorite lines. Kevin just shrugs again. He will watch the team train and act as their assistant coach, torturing himself in the process. He won’t need to supervise them off the court though. They sure as hell won’t let him.

“I believe you need some kind of creative outlet for all that energy,” she says and looks pointedly at his bouncing leg. He sits up straighter and forces himself to stop. “Have you thought about painting?” Painting? Is this a joke? He can’t even hold a pencil right now. It has taken him way too long to convince his right hand to produce a legible version of his hasty handwriting. He still can’t reproduce his own signature. Although the experience of writing with his right instead of his left hand has been a little eye-opening, in a somewhat of an ‘oh, I never thought about that’ kind of way. It is somehow strange to be able to rest his hand or wrist on the paper without smudging the letters, to be able to see what he is writing without obscuring it with his own hand. He can’t share these thoughts though, they are so obvious and mundane.

But painting? He is not an artist. He is an athlete. They have told him to take it easy for a while. Some words like trauma and abuse and PTSD have been mentioned and made his skin crawl. The last thing Kevin wants is to drag all his years at Edgar Allan into the open and talk about them. I played Exy for the best team in Class I Exy in the US. End of story. —‘My something-like-a-brother broke my hand and I ran away’ doesn’t fit into that story. If Bee had told him to write a book or something, he could understand her intentions. A neat little insight into his past. But painting…

“I’m not a painter.”

“You don’t need to be. There is no pressure, maybe you’ll like it. Why don’t you give it a try. I can get you all you need to get started,” she encourages.

“Yeah? Like —is this some sort of therapeutic —stuff,” he almost said bullshit, “to get over trauma or something? Because I don’t need that.”

“I think you do though.” His anxiety attacks. She knows about them. Maybe even Andrew tells her about them. The goalkeeper sees the team’s therapist on a regular basis and he has seen Kevin at his worst. “Just give it a try. That’s all I’m asking. Can it hurt? We can always look for an alternative.” He just wants to get out of here.

“Fine,” he agrees. And that is that.

                                                                                                     next>>

[berrysbestbloggityblog]

13th February 2017- All for the Game series

Author: Nora Sakavic Genre: Thriller, sports, relationship Rating: This is the only series ever to challenge Harry Potter as my favourite. It is incredible Favourite Quote(s): (You should be lucky I narrowed it down to five) ‘Fight because you don’t know how to die quietly. Win because you don’t know how to lose.’ David Wymack, The King’s Men ‘Is your learning curve a horizontal line?’- Andrew Minyard, The King’s Men ‘I’ve been a problem for nineteen years. I’m too tired to be one tonight.’- Neil Josten, The King’s Men ‘Don’t look at me like that. I am not your answer, and you sure as fuck aren’t mine.’- Andrew Minyard, The King’s Men ‘I won’t be like them. I won’t let you let me be.’- Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, The King’s Men

I’m going to warn you now, this is going to be long, and spoiler-y, and probably make little structural sense.

 So I hate sports. Any kind of sport. I just about tolerate swimming, and never just doing lanes.

I would also probably sell a kidney to be able to play Exy.

This series, quite honestly, has changed my life (and not just about sport). It features; diversity, therapy, alcohol, abuse survivors of all kinds, not enough playing the actual sport, torture, the MobTM, extreme character development, my OTP and too many chess references.

I will start, quite appropriately, with Neil Abram Josten, the many named man. I will not lie and pretend that one of the main reasons I love this series is not because Neil is the first canon demisexual character I have ever read. As a demisexual, this representation was something I didn’t even know I had been craving until I got it. His character made me more secure in my identity; he meant that I wasn’t making it up, that I was real and valid and there wasn’t anything wrong with me. I wasn’t picky or just ‘hadn’t had enough alcohol yet’ (thanks mum); what I felt was different but it wasn’t bad. For all the demisexuals out there, Neil was a godsend.

(For clarification on Neil’s sexuality I recommend reading SpangleBangle’s one-shot ‘Swinging Along the Z Axis’ on Ao3.)

More than that, Neil’s character just broke my heart. He’s haunted and hunted and desperate not to let anyone else get caught in the crosshairs. He doesn’t always do the smart thing, but he does generally do the right thing, and never takes the easy way out. He’s scarred and easily triggered and in some ways damaged, at least when he first arrives at Palmetto, but never, ever broken. Not even Baltimore or Evermore could break Neil Josten and while he’s sometimes regarded in the fandom as the soft to Andrew’s sharp, you’ll never find the Foxes thinking that because Neil is sly and underhand and play’s dirty when someone he cares about is on the line. If Andrew had to be the one to cut the deal with Ichirou, he would never have gotten out of that car alive.

He asked Andrew TO HIS FACE why his ex thought Andrew was tying him up, and didn’t clock for a single second until Andrew literally told him he’d blow him. He asked Nicky if they were friends because he’d never had any before. He is about as quick to get a social cue as I am running. He is so respectful of Andrew’s boundaries even before he found out why, even before their deal. He left Andrew, a person whom nobody had ever admired, whom no-one had ever been grateful for despite Andrew giving up EVERYTHING for them, with “thank you, you were amazing” and figured that would be enough to cover the destruction his death would bring. He chose being tortured by Riko on the off-chance it might spare Andrew some pain, and he chose to be taken to quite literally his worst nightmare, giving up his life and his freedom and everything he’d managed to accomplish that year to keep his Foxes safe.

For the first canon demisexual, he’s certainly setting the bar high.

I’ll save Andrew for last, so let’s get on to the rest of the Foxes.

I’m quite sure I could write an essay on each of them (except maybe Seth. Sorry. I just. Hated that guy). For your sake I’m going to keep it short, but feel free to ask me for a full character eval I’ll be happy to do it.

Matt Boyd- Literal sunshine, saw actual homeless child Neil Josten and decided immediately he would die for him, half of the brOTP of the century, you just KNOW he’s so sweet and attentive and respectful of Dan because she’d never go out with him otherwise. He canonically has a white and orange themed wedding… I actually can’t. He didn’t blame the Monsters for forcing him to go full cold turkey even though he knew Andrew didn’t do it for him and he was ready to fight to keep Neil after Baltimore.

Dan Wilds- Absolute BAMF, can and will kick your ass, the only female captain in Class I Exy and she’s had an uphill battle on her shoulders for years before Neil or even Matt arrives at Palmetto. She has short hair and probably wear gym shorts 90% of the time but she’s still allowed to dress up without everyone being like ‘omg wow dan in a dress’ like it would be in any other book. She was a stripper and she owns it because it’s what she did to survive and it was selflessness not ignorance or anything else that’s stereotypically attributed to strippers, that drew her to it.

Renee Walker- Basically a flower, if it was a flower that could also slit you from neck to gut and plaster on a serene smile a second later, she’s an accepting Christian who isn’t gay herself (*cough* EXTREME RENISON SUBTEXT THO *cough*), she’s working her way through her trauma in a way that is healthy, she wants to put her past behind her but she’ll bring it out to protect/help her friends. She’s the only person that stays with Andrew without some kind of deal between them and she doesn’t do it out of pity.

Allison Reynolds- will slay anybody with her look, refuses to let her grief break her, came through being cut off by her family for not being picture perfect and an eating disorder with confidence and grace and sass. She’s brutally honest in a refreshing way and I think that post King’s Men, with all the secrets out of the way, her and Neil can become much closer.

Aaron Minyard- oh he’s an asshat but he still wheedles his way into your heart. He loves Katelyn more than he probably thought possible, and he’s so snarky I love it. He also killed Drake despite training to be a doctor which I think is something everyone always forgets. I think the thing that annoys me the most about him is not that he’s mean to everybody but that he doesn’t even try to understand Andrew; he just immediately blames him and hates him but not enough to let Andrew go.

Nicky Hemmick- ‘let’s get this straight: I’m not’, nobody really talks about how horrific his childhood being raised in such a homophobic household did to him. They sent him to CONVERSION CAMP and only falling in love with Erik managed to save him from that dark place. His parents refuse to love him on account of his sexuality and then they manipulate him in order to set up Andrew for rape. Obviously it’s Andrew who gets hurt the most here (well I mean Drake dies but like that’s a good thing) but Nicky, like Neil, has to live with that guilt for the rest of his life. He’s a constant ray of positivity despite everything, despite his cousins never thanking him for doing this long-distance mess from his home just to be there for them.

Kevin Day- oh Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. Kevin comes perhaps the farthest of all the foxes over the course of the series and it makes me feel so proud. I screamed in delight and had to put the book down to do a little victory dance when he got his Queen tattoo. I worry sincerely about his liver. He’s a sad little history nerd who has made Exy his LifeTM and an actual asshat on the court. Probably about as good as Neil at knowing how to make friends and he shows he cares through Exy references only but I still love my toll bean.

Ok. Deep breaths. We’re onto Andrew.

Sometimes I think about his character and it just makes me tear up slightly? He’s an apathetic shitty midget who hates Neil and sits on tall buildings because he’s scared of heights for the AestheticTM. Basically everyone on this Exy team is some shade of LGBT+ and yet there’s no similarities between how they express their sexualities. Andrew is gay and a sexual abuse survivor and a foster kid and ex-juvie, but he’s not stereotyped into any of the boxes any other series would put him in.

I know too many people who have been sexually abused. Any other time that I’ve read a book where someone was sexually abused it was either liberally ignored/easily overcome or the person was driven to committing suicide. Neither is particularly helpful to survivors in my opinion, not that I am any kind of expert, and therefore Andrew’s story blew my mind. Andrew is never going to ‘go back to normal’. He is always going to have boundaries and yes or nos and triggers. He is never going to smile often or take Neil off on romantic dates or care about more than his minimum. And that, that is ok. There is no checklist for trauma survivors that they have to work through to be counted as better. Even more brilliant than Nora allowing Andrew to be changed permanently by his trauma, is the way he has an active and encouraged approach to his own recovery. His relationship with Bee is something I truly treasure. I am lucky enough to have not ever gone through something similar to Andrew, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be extremely happy that other people have that representation. Recovery is a slow process, with setbacks and bad days, which is also shown in this series, but it’s possible.

I like that Andrew didn’t always somehow magically know to go and get therapy. He survived Drake through self-harm and while he doesn’t encourage it, which is good, he also doesn’t completely demonise it like some people do. I will be the last person to condone harming yourself, but wanting to be able to make choices in an otherwise choice-less situation is completely understandable.

Proust trying to ruin his scars makes me want to vomit.

He was put on meds after he attacked some men for attacking his cousin and everyone thinks he’s dangerous? And manic? And out of control? Neil is perhaps the first person Andrew lets in enough to understand that everything Andrew does has a reason, and while it’s not always a good one it is also never a selfish one. Their relationship was a trust-build for two and a half books and it makes it so much more powerful. By the time they progress to anything physical, they’re already tied by something unbreakable, not that Andrew’s likely to admit it any time soon.

This is already like five pages long oops so I’m going to round off now.

This series made me laugh, and cry, and I quite literally screamed into my pillow when Andrew finally kissed Neil but I think most importantly it opened my eyes to lots of previously not-thought-about topics and I’m a better person for having read it.

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