what did they put in when i fly towards you to make it so addicting

Can you clarify why you said those things about Even? Expand on this please!

Can I expand on my absolute adoration for all things Even and indulge in some serious nostalgia?  Yes, yes I can, anon.  For reference, we are discussing this little moment of emotional overload.

First, I said Even is a variety of things: soft and sweet, a ‘cool’ guy, who is also kind and caring and unashamed of being a dork and embracing the cringy things he likes.  So the first thing I should probably do is address those.

Well, I mean where do we begin?  (sorry if this is stuff I already said before; I know I’ve waxed lyrical about Even before so this is probably repeats).  Even is usually unfailingly decent to everyone, he genuinely loves being around people and making them laugh and feel at ease.  I mean, the obvious one is Isak and the way Even is with him.  How he seems to intuitively know what Isak needs and gives it to him.  He’s so kind with it, letting Isak set the pace and parameters of what they do and when they do it.  When he’s going into a manic state, he shows exactly what the core of him is and cares enough to accept without even a hint of a murmur that Isak is uncomfortable kissing in public.  He’s ready to share his love with the entire world, bubbling over with this exuberant energy and yet despite that big romantic shout out (the ‘epic’ love story he loves so much) being where his heart is he still respects Isak and accepts the boundaries he sets.  And he does it immediately and with kindness and care.

There’s the way he’s willing to lie with Isak wrapped up in his arms, cuddling for basically as long as Isak wants to.  Isak, who’s never really had any softness to him, just melts when he’s in this situation because Even makes it safe for him to do so.  I mean, obviously Even gets something out of this as well.  When we see him with Sonja it tends to be kissing and making out rather than cuddling and intimacy and Even’s probably soaking that up as well.  But the important thing is that Even makes Isak feel safe, and he does it by being so gentle and kind.  

There’s the way he calms Isak down after their run in with the homophobe on the street, knows how to settle Isak with just a few words and touches.  His own feelings have been affected, and you can clearly see his own shock and the way it affects him before he springs into action and yet the one who matters to him is Isak and Isak’s comfort on his birthday.  His focus and attention is outside himself, and while this is the most obvious with Isak he’s not the only one we see Even doing this with.

And there are of course times when he pokes fun at Isak, but the way he does it is so gentle that it’s clear there’s no malicious intent.  ‘Blah blah blah good story’, the teasing about Nas, ‘you’re so young’ etc etc are all moments where Even is gently ribbing Isak and what he’s said or done, but he also laughs at himself, and makes it clear he’s laughing with Isak rather than at him.  For Isak this is probably a revelation, because while he and his friends are also inveterate teasers, they tend to do it in a much more biting or cutting way.  Think about the way they are with Magnus (who tbh sometimes deserves the roastings he gets), and then compare the way Even teases.  There’s no bite to it and it’s never about anything that really would hurt unlike some of the things the boys say to each other.

Speaking of Magnus, there’s the way Even takes his crisis of confidence seriously, picking up exactly what he needs to be able to pursue Vilde.  The boys are trying to coach him how to be like them, acting indifferent, being less desperate, trying to done him down.  Even, instead, sees Magnus as he is and gives him the recognition he needs that he can be himself, be ‘desperate’ and still be okay.  I guess that’s something I left out of what I said - that Even is perceptive and sees what people need and what he can do to set them at ease, and he cares enough to use it.

So that’s already a looong list of the things he does that show his sweet, soft, caring and kind side, and I could go on and on citing other examples of how he does this.  But there are the other sides to him as well.  The fact is that he’s introduced as the ‘cool’ godlike figure into Isak’s life (and tbh Isak never really loses this impression of him, which is really sweet in its own right).  And the thing is, this isn’t actually a veneer (as much as Even seems to play up to it a bit to attract Isak once he realises this will work).  Even really is effortlessly cool.  There’s an aura about him in the way he is at school and the way people react to him.  The first impression he gives off is of coolness even before he consciously starts to deploy it.

Noora and Eskild are both charmed by him easily when they meet him, the kids at school talk about him in a way that suggests that he’s been noticed in a good way.  Of course, any newcomer into a school is going to attract attention, but it can’t be denied that the type of attention he garners is generally positive and the fact that it has filtered to other years means he’s making a splash of some sort.  Think about the way Vilde talks about ‘Even in third year’ in texts to Isak (I think it’s Vilde - someone does anyway) and you get the picture.  His name is one that’s supposed to be recognised and generally not in a negative or judging way (there is some of that as well but it’s not the entirety of how they see him).

And then we have how he’s a dork and embraces the cringey stuff he enjoys.  He’s never apologetic at all about what he likes and what interests him.  From the ‘epic’ love story he creates for his film project, his unashamed claim of Baz Luhrmann as his favourite director amid Mikael’s roasting about it, to his sheer joy in Gabrielle despite Isak trying to make it seem like it’s not cool, Even is never one to back down from his passions even if someone else thinks they’re a bit cringy.  He tells tall stories to make others laugh, he encourages people to be true to themselves because he is true to himself.  

He refuses to be shamed for who he is.  He dances and sings with joy and abandon, he spreads his arms wide and does things with his entire being.  He’s not tied down into being any one definition of what ‘a man’ should look like.  He doesn’t care to be ‘cool’ except in so much as it attracts Isak and is what he uses to facilitate that, and even then he lets that guard down almost as soon as he can because he’d rather show himself to Isak as he is (though with the caveat that he hides his bipolar diagnosis).

And the thing is that Even is exactly the guy Isak needed to push him into loving himself.  It took someone who loves himself (though again with that caveat about the bipolar stuff) to help Isak see that he can also see the ‘cringy’ bits of who he is and let them shine out.  That he can be gay and like rap and hiphop music, that he can be a ‘bro’ but also soft and caring.  That he doesn’t have to be a flamboyant guy to be gay, that he can just love Even and that can be part of who he is and he doesn’t have to change to do that.  

Even’s example is so powerful because (as I’ve said before) Isak has very few models of what ‘a man’ looks like.  He has fairly rigid ideas of what gay guys are like, he has very set ideas of what he should be like to fit in with his friends, and they aren’t compatible with seeing himself as gay.  So it takes someone like Even who’s such a great mix of all this stuff - cool, manly, sweet, gentle, kind, caring, dorky - to show isak that there’s more to life than the roles he’s seen to date.  He was unlikely to be able to be true to himself with an Eskild, and he was equally unlikely to be able to be himself with someone like Jonas or the other guys.  They all have great nuances as well of course, but in terms of masculinity Isak sees things in a pretty black and white way - gay is flamboyant, straight is bro-ish. He genuinely needed someone like Even, filled with so many glorious shades of grey, to recognise the varied parts of himself and be able to flourish properly.