Allison Reynolds is an inherently hilarious character because imagine you're a college athlete athleting and you get checked so hard you fall onto your ass and you look up to see who did it and holy shit, it's Paris fucking Hilton

Screenshot of the exact moment i knew i was going to be obsessed with jeremy knox

what do we think sisters.

Gary’s Sex Tips #1002

If she calls out her ex boyfriend’s name in bed go to his house and kiss him. See what the dick about! See what all the fuss is about!

yes jeremy

+ bonus

riko: i am your king, nathaniel!

neil, covered in his own blood: has anyone ever told you that you take college sport kinda too serious?

the fact that riko agreed to let kevin major in history and also majored in it himself on the condition that kevin did all his homework,,,, and kevin did,,,,, The things this adds to their relationship im gonna be sick

they really are that post thats like 'my brother is a horrible man and i am his favorite'....... obsessed........ obsessed!!!!!!!!! the idea that riko could be reasoned with, that he clearly had some Complex about kevin that went beyond jealousy and morphed into something murkier and laced with obsession..... WE KNEW THIS BEFORE but it was seriously soooooo delicious to me. oh riko! your psychosexual obsession with kevin day will lead you to places you shouldn't even go with a gun. this person has never had sex with anyone he has not accidentally called kevin in bed. pseudo incest georg

Sure, Dan is a bad captain, if the only measure you are using is the fact that the Foxes hadn't won a championship yet. That misunderstands both what the team is supposed to be and why Wymack chose her (and why he later chose Neil).

The point of the Foxes as a team is to help the players. To give them access to opportunities they would not have otherwise gotten. I think it's easy to forget that this is their fifth year of existence, and that by the end of the books, no Fox had even graduated yet. There were players dropping out of the team until the semester before Neil gets in – you can see that because they were nine players counting Kevin, who only signed as a striker during the summer.

The main problem the Foxes faced on their first years was that they did not respect each other. After their debut was a disaster, Wymack recruits Dan because she is hard-headed and prideful and not easily cowed. He needed a captain that would not be whittled down by an unruly team, someone willing to stand their ground. That's what she provides: endurance. Dan was never MEANT to make the Foxes champions, she was meant to force them to get their shit together for long enough that they could start to worry about winning.

You can tell by the Upperclassmen's account of what their first years on the team were like that the Foxes Neil meet are already the improved version. Dan, Allison and Renee were constantly harassed. Matt had to sleep on their couch because the other players kept pushing drugs on him. If nothing else, even as the '06 Foxes still were not collaborating on the court, they stopped turning on each other out of it.

Do I think that Dan's hatred of the Monsters was unprofessional of her as a captain? Sure. Was it unjustified? No. I love Andrew, I do, but he is unreasonable on purpose. The same way Andrew's trauma has shaped him to behave the way that he does, acting by his own moral code and never explaining himself to anyone, so has Dan's influenced the way she acts. Dan was pushed into sex work as a minor, to provide for herself, her aunt and her baby niece. She is wary of men in general (in quite the same way Andrew is wary of women, actually), and for two years before the Monsters got in the team, she was fighting tooth and nail against male players whose behavior could be compared to his (not caring for the game, being dismissive of her, pushing drugs into Matt as she could do nothing but watch him struggle).

I would also argue, though, that this is supposed to be a flaw. Dan not giving the Monsters the benefit of the doubt is supposed to be a mistake. At the same time, it is completely understandable and in-character why she did it. In the same way her disproportionate response to Kevin is understandable – he was a man that only knew how to criticize her hard work, and he hurt the first person to ever have Dan's back.

And you are right that Dan could get an in with the Monsters! Because she did. That was what Neil was for.

When Neil arrives at Palmetto, he hates Andrew's guts. Up until like 80% through the first book, Andrew treats him just as he does anyone else – hostile, dismissive, aggressive. Andrew keeps Kevin, the one reason Neil is in Palmetto in the first place, away from him for weeks.

The first people Neil actually befriends are Dan and Matt, who, after his first time at Columbia when Neil starts to hand around the Monsters more, are the ones to tell him he should exploit that connection to help get the team together. Renee refused to interfere because that could hurt her hard-earned friendship with Andrew, but Neil agreed because uniting the team would help his goals of getting to play for as long as possible. Throughout the trilogy, Dan and Matt actually keep asking Neil to be the bridge between them and the Monsters, until Drake happens and they finally unite with the intent of kicking Riko's ass (and, by the way, it's Dan that urges them "not to loose a single game this spring").

So tl;dr: Dan doesn't unite the team and make them winners because that wasn't her purpose. She built the base Neil would later come in and work with.

(also, that's why I at least think he will also struggle with captaincy: Neil relies on being able to manipulate and threaten people into cooperation. Eventually, he is going to run into people who won't take him seriously, and in those cases he will lack Dan's level-headedness and pride to guide him and will just keep butting heads. It's called having flaws, and neither of those makes one better or worse than the other as captains. It just. makes them different characters.)

tw: opinion

am i the only one who doesn’t particularly think Dan Wilds is a good captain? she lead the foxes to their first championship, but did she? sure she was assertive and tried to get everyone in line. but for 3 years she failed to do what neil did in 1? (unite the foxes) neil obviously had an in with the monsters and an advantage but i feel like if Dan really wanted to, she could’ve (got an in, even if it was small, with them, i mean). and she could’ve asked renee for help. but she basically hated them since what they did to matt in columbia and i feel like she let her emotions/feelings towards that whole situation get in the way of actually trying to bring the team together and stuff?

(and, contrary to popular belief, i think neil’s gonna go on to be a much better captain than her sorry 🤷‍♀️)

Monsters pregame:

thinking about nest trio dynamics makes me so insane because what do you mean the first thing riko said to kevin at kathy’s show was “you’ve gained weight.” what do you mean in older drafts kevin’s hair was long because riko liked it that way. what do you mean riko’s final straw to hurt kevin permanently was because kevin and jean spoke french to each other. what do you MEAN jean was forced to be in kevin’s shoes when kevin left but he was never expected to be as close to riko as kevin was. literal deadbeat husband (riko) attic wife (kevin) and family dog (jean) dynamics. fascinating and definitely freudian

Exy Fans on Twitter (Neil’s tattoo edition)

Reminder that Jeanee is still queer rep. It is literally a queer ship. Jean does not stop being bisexual just because he likes a woman. Bisexual people are not gay-lite.

If you think Jerejean is is queer rep and Jeanee is not, I need you to sit down and reflect on your biphobia for a bit

— Frank Bidart, from “Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016; ‘The Third Hour of the Night’", published c. 2017.

he’s got that previously neglected shelter dog rizz. he looks like he wants to quietly sit next to you on the couch while you watch TV

The buzzer goes off again, and Neil's heart stops. The ringing in his ears isn't all him. His teammates are screaming, wordless war cries of disbelief and victory. Neil's fingers shake so badly it is almost impossible to get the straps of his helmet undone, but finally he manages to throw his helmet off to one side. He blinks sweat out of his eyes and looks up at the scoreboard. Ten-nine, Foxes' favor—Kevin had scored in the last two seconds of the game.

Day: Friday, April 26th / 27th* Time: 10:03 PM EST

*Due to the Leap Year, I have opted to highlight the day rather than the date to keep the events in occurrence to the 2007 year. I will continue to mark both days accordingly.

Exy Fans on Twitter (Nathaniel Wesninski edition)