#the sunshine court lucas

[belonareyna]

TSC SPOILERS

When I finished TSC I knew exactly against who people would go.

Grayson? Of course piece of the most smelly shit

Zane? I hope he lives in misery thinking of all his sins 24/7

Lucas? Let me stop you there. Let me stop you there. In no world I would not condone Lucas calling Jean a whore, as well as the rest of the team. He was the only one who told him to his face? Maybe Cat or Laila too (shit I don't remember).

Also, who the fuck compares Luther to Lucas?

Luther was aware of the situation. Andrew told him what Drake did to him.

Lucas was making a desperate movement with a stupid decision (because come on Lucas, Grayson has beaten you up, what the fuck you think he's going to do to the person he called whore? Play my little pony with him?) But he didn't knew what the actual fuck was going on there. Like no one in the team knows, except maybe a little bit Jeremy, Laila, Cat, and the coaches, and just bc Jean slipped.

Literally how anyone could think that there were tortures and rapes in an elite team between the players with the knowledge of the coaches and all of the personnel?

But Lucas is also a Greyson's victim. Of course, not to the extent of Jean (and I really hope not), but he was severely beaten by him. He was so scared he needed to know the new Ravens member of the team.

I'm not saying he's out of faults, but picturing him as a villain makes me remember how people in fandoms decide to forgive and forget every mistake of a character and then bury another one in all of his mistakes as if they are nothing more.

[bisexualchaosdemon]

Just realised that Jeremy being surprised that Jean is nineteen means that it isn't a well-known fact outside of the Raven line-up. Lucas is very likely saying all this shit about Jean being a whore or whatever without even realising how young Jean is. If my maths is right, Lucas is actually older than Jean is.

[allforthegayphase]

TW: rape

Something I really appreciated about The Sunshine Court was its nauseatingly realistic depiction of rape culture.

Jean’s (repeated, violent) sexual assault isn’t treated as something horrific; in the toxic environment of The Nest, it’s normalized. The real story — Riko ordering 5 male players to rape Jean as a sadistic way to ‘break him in’ — is quickly twisted by his abusers; Jean is seen as a calculating vixen who slept his way to the top, for a Perfect Court number:

They continuously mock and taunt Jean with senseless jokes about it. There is an element of jealousy at play; Jean is a prodigy player, and, as he says himself at some point in the book, his older teammates didn’t enjoy being shown up by a child. They certainly enjoyed knocking him down a peg, though, by humiliating him and creating an illusion that he only got his spot on the team for sleeping around, not his talent:

Even one of his rapists, Grayson, continues this false narrative despite knowing the truth (or maybe he even convinced himself this narrative is the truth; that Jean ‘seduced’ him for a spot on the starting lineup):

Other ravens who don’t know the truth seem to quickly believe the narrative that a 16 yo chose to sleep with a bunch of his superiors for a personal gain; that is certainly easier than entertaining the thought that your teammates (friends?) are capable of something this horrific. Or maybe they simply don’t question it too hard; after all, Jean can’t tell his side of the story.

The rumors eventually spread outside the Nest. Jean’s reputation is tarnished to the point that this is one of the first things strangers on the internet learn about him:

The most heartbreaking detail about it all is Jean’s age. He was a 16 boy on the college team, the youngest player on the lineup; a foreigner who couldn’t even speak English when he arrived; an outsider. Despite the fact that his young age is something that even the ravens find particularly scandalous about the whole situation, Jean’s agency is never questioned. He’s not seen as a minor who was taken advantage of by older, superior men — and most of them are quite significantly older, having already graduated by the time Jean’s 19; Grayson seems to be the youngest of them and he’s at least three years older than Jean.

As many victims of SA, Jean had no choice but to continue living with his abusers side by side, pretending like nothing happened. Knowing there’s absolutely nothing he can do.

The first time someone voices concern over the questionable circumstances surrounding the whole situation happens in this conversation with Jeremy (to be fair, it seems like Jean's age isn't public knowledge but the ravens obviously know):

And as many victims, Jean internalized his experience as something he deserved on some level:

TLDR: Sexual assault is, unfortunately, a very big part of our culture; it’s not just something that happens in the dark alleys; rapists aren't just scary strangers. They're also your friends, peers, teammates. The way the Nest (and the general public as a whole) turns a blind eye at best and mocks and humiliates the victim at worst is a microcosm of how SA is largely treated in real life. It was genuinely fascinating to see it depicted so realistically, even though it made for a heavy read at several points. I hope Nora keeps up the good work, and we'll see further exploration of the topic and Jean dealing with his trauma in the next book.

[hyperboleigh91]

TSC spoilers + headcanon

------

Lucas going through Grayson's things after he kicks it and finding various journals, pictures, etc, all about Jean because Grayson was deeply obsessed... And now Lucas knows everything.

He knows who the other four were.

He knows what the coaches did.

He knows what Riko did.

And he has proof.

[sharkszone]

I love lucas johnson.

He is not cruel or cutting, but rather desperate. He is a younger brother who is BEGGING his older brother to come home. He wants nothing more than for his old life to return, for his family to come back. And now the embodiment of all his guilt and anger about losing his brother to the nest, jean moreau, stands in front of him. Do i think lucas reacted correctly? No. But god i am grateful he was not lead by grace and filtered speech. His reaction to the truth about his brother was raw and real and STILL he was desperate to fix what they had.

And when his plans backfired, when he made his mistakes, when he hurt a good man? He repented. He did not need forgiveness, because he was selfless in his apology. He was human. He was human and he was pushed to his very limit. Would you not act irrationally too, watching your brother turn? Would you not claw onto any opportunity to keep him close?

Lucas johnson was a younger brother who adored grayson. And he was stuck mourning him, even when he lived. Even when he stood in front of him. Because the brothers now lived as ghosts in eachothers lives. A haunting reminder of what he could’ve had. What he once had. And now? Grayson is dead. And lucas will never get the closure he needed. He will never be able to ask grayson why he left, why he hurt jean, why he sold his soul to exy. Grayson is dead and lucas will never be at peace with that fact.

[constelationprize]

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

[codename-adler]

20.

oof. don’t feel like giving him an introduction cuz he’s a TOOL, but yeah, here’s Lucas Johnson’s debut as my scapegoat for the socmed au.

Andrew & I & @minyard-05 are rooting for Jeremy to lose control.

Robin has escaped containment and i can’t be held responsible for what she causes from now on…

and at last the newest and youngest addition to the Trojans, Ophelia Knox 👀

special talk here. Jean’s prank on Kevin are the lyrics to Aya Nakamura’s Djadja (translation below) but the joke itself is inspired by this video where an editor applied her lyrics over the opening scene of the film 300. french comedic gold AND music👌

[fd5800]

more tsc memes because I couldn't help myself:

[joanofexys]

i have things to say about lucas johnson that i think will upset everyone

[thesunshinecourts]

five curiosities for the next book, after reading the sunshine court

a non-exhaustive list, but five things i'm curious to (hopefully) find out more about in TSC2, or that i have questions about still:

what happened at the trojans' fall banquet (presumably jeremy's first year)? it's a Scandal, and jeremy cannot stand to be around bryson, and annalise has never forgiven him for sticking with exy after that, despite having attended all his games in high school. given the allusions to his stepfather, and also his step-grandfather being a congressman, i can see how jeremy's sexuality might be relevant to the situation—especially if we read into lucas' stiff apology and shame at his implication about jeremy and jean as being born from more than just common decency, but rather knowledge of this being a previous sticking point in terms of jeremy's scandals—but i also keep thinking about what cat said. jeremy has—three. two brothers, one sister. the way she says it, how it sticks out to jean as an odd switch, and the fact that we've only met two siblings – it makes me wonder what happened to the third. or if that's even the right question to ask, regarding jeremy's siblings.

elodie. i'm curious if we learn anything about what happened—by and large, i kinda hope not, if only because then jean has to too, unless it turns out stuart is lying, but that's a very different kind of fallout. (i don't actively theorise he is—at some point, these kids will run out of tolerance for ghost stories coming back to life—but i think its possibility ought to be considered, at least). i think we'll get more flashes of her from jean's thoughts, though, and i anticipate lots of heartbreak lmao

lucas. assuming stuart's contact comes through, and neil's hit goes ahead, we've got lucas in the aftermath of finding out his brother is a monster, and jean saying not to call the police, and then possibly his brother being dead. if it happens any other day—if it happens in west virginia, especially—i suspect lucas might be able to look at it like another domino in the ravens machine falling down, or even that something horrible happened to him when he returned home, but if it's still in LA, after what he did to jean, after jean said no cops-------i can see how that might twist into something more suspicious. who knows! i'm curious to see what happens there. grayson is a monster, but he is still lucas' brother. aaron and kevin still have complicated grief about tilda and riko, and they were their direct, constant abusers; cass never learned until after the fact, and lucas is in a complex space between the two parts of that spectrum. if grayson dies, i think the fallout will be unavoidable for exploration

this is a small one but man, i just want to keep seeing jean's list grow. it tears something out of me every time, and stitches me back together, and i want to go through that over and over, because i want to see a jean who not only hears that his life is his and worth living, but a jean who learns to believe it too

i'm just kinda assuming we see the foxes again, because i remember nora's character list having new details about characters who didn't show up in this one, but i'm also quietly hoping for more thea. their scene made me ache, and he'd never had good defenses against thea, and kevin knew that. jean would kill him for bringing her here made my heart do the !! double-tap. i'm extremely invested in jean, thea and kevin as a unit, and it would be so incredibly wonderful to see more

[belonareyna]

“He’s very angry.”

“At you?” Jeremy asked, alarmed.

“At everything,” Lucas said evasively. “At us. At Jean most of all.” Jeremy asked,

“Do you feel safe with him there?”

“He’s my brother,” Lucas said.

___

"What happened to Lucas?” She looked at Jeremy at that, expression tight with concern.

“He turned up on their doorstep beat to hell,” Jeremy said, gesturing to the left side of his face. “Bruised from temple to jaw with two missing teeth. Lucas Johnson,”

“Grayson Johnson’s younger brother.”

[kevinsdsy]

the trojans social media au (pt. 13): i’m fighting for my life trying to keep coming up with new parts i fear we’re going to see a decline in parts soon

[allthethoughtsandstuff]

my favorite thing about the sunshine court so far is how terribly unsubtle both jean and jeremy are

[jeanmoreausautismstickers]

we're probably going to have to see how Lucas mourns btw

we're gonna have to read about him finding out and likely reaching out to jeremy

how he might be angry with jean because of his grief, even though he knows how horrible grayson was and is

we're going to have to watch him lose his brother for a third time, grieve his brother for a third time.

[hyperboleigh91]

TSC spoilers

--------------

While Rhemann was cleaning up Jean's wounds after Grayson, you know he had a moment where he looked at Jean's eyes and saw the thousand-yard stare and realized Jean had been through this and much worse throughout his life.

On top of that, Lucas's attempted questions for Jean make it very clear that at least one person forced themselves on Jean while he was at Evermore. And Rhemann will know that Jean was only 16 when he joined the line, so it won't be hard for him to come to the same conclusion Jeremy did, though hopefully he'll be able to determine that Jean didn't ask for it without Jean having to say that.

What I hope is that someone learns about the fact that Tetsuji Moriyama brought a seemingly random child from France and had that 14 year old child living in Evermore.

Because to anyone normal, like the Trojans, that would set off every alarm possible that Jean may have been trafficked. And if they begin to follow that suspicion, what they'll find will only add to it. His name was changed, he was isolated, no one protected him when he was assaulted, he is terrified of going to the police, he wasn't allowed to speak to the public even though the other two star players were always doing interviews...

*Obviously, Riko and Kevin also lived in Evermore, but that wasn't random. To an outsider, it makes sense because Riko is Tetsuji's nephew, and Kevin is the child of Kayleigh - Tetsuji's partner and one of the creators of Exy. Jean has no such connections.

[vikingpoteto]

I've seen people compare Lucas setting up a meeting between Jean and Grayson to Luther bringing Drake to see Andrew, but I don't think that's fair or accurate. I think Lucas parallels Nicky in this situation.

Yes, Lucas had more than enough evidence that Grayson harmed Jean, just like Luther heard from Andrew that Drake was an abuser.

However, Lucas' denial comes from a place of grief. Lucas loved his brother, he couldn’t accept that the person he grew up with became such a monster. Even though Grayson had been violent towards Lucas himself, there is a part of him that refuses to believe Grayson would go that far. Until the last moment, Lucas was telling himself that his brother couldn’t be the villain (even though a part of him suspected the truth, given the fact that he tries to keep the gate closed between them.)

Just like Lucas, Nicky knew it was unlikely his parents were going to accept him but he wanted to try again, unlikely as it may be.

Lucas asking Jean to follow him as a desperate attempt to get his brother back isn't different.