Joejhang - Zoe

kevin and neil as character foils

this is a long one because i love yapping and i love aftg and i love yapping about aftg. spoilers ahead !!! continue at your own risk.

bro neil and kevin function so well as character foils; they emphasise each other's strengths and weaknesses so well, and it also explains why they work so well as both friends and adversaries. for example, neil is constantly calling kevin a coward. this is obviously narrator bias, cos we can see when we analyse closer and also from jean's narration in tsc, kevin's fear is born out of deep-rooted trauma and a history of abuse. but it is also true that neil and kevin come from similar backstories of familial abuse and trauma, but neil never stayed in one place for very long but kevin has lived in the same place is whole life. and despite these shared traumas, neil's naturally confrontational and prickly. he doesn't let people walk all over him and doesn't hesitate to defend himself and his loved ones and offend others at the same time, no matter the consequences. he's a very instinctual character and doesn't think very much about the future or the long run. kevin, on the other hand, has a pretty acute sense of self-preservation, and is willing to be insulted and beaten up (physically or metaphorically) to ensure he's better off in the long run (this is similar to jean and how he rarely fights back and even offers himself up to be hurt). kevin thinks neil is thoughtless and careless, and neil thinks kevin is cowardly and spineless. they're both sort of right; a crucial part of neil's character is that he's grounded in the moment and acts instinctively, and a crucial part of kevin's is his deep-rooted fear (which neil acknowledges and also relates to in tfc) and how he fights past it. throughout the narrative, neil learns to think about something and someone other than himself, and kevin learns to outgrow his fear and fight back.

no cos fem!andreil is literally like neil "i could change your life" josten and andrew "you could be my wife" minyard SOMEONE WRITE A FIC GOOD GOD

wake up it's thinking about neil josten hours