8-41 analysis
y'all were right, i really loved this one LMAO. as always spoilers below!
okay so first of all, love that david seems to say this line while not looking at ANYONE. I know I mentioned in the last update that David really does seem like an outsider in his own family so it was nice to see this moment (and more evidence that Nick and David wear their hair in the same cut, but with a different style. They even have the same cowlick lol)
moment for outfit analysis bc i actually don't think we see nick in black very often outside of the truham uniform! i like that while nick is in short sleeves and a dark shirt with lighter pants, david is in a lighter colored jumper with dark pants. i do think colors play a lot when it comes to symbolism and i don't want to: 'well the curtains are blue because the mc is depressed' the situation. so lets move on.
COUGH COUGH WOW MORE EVIDENCE THAT NICK MIGHT BE AUTISTIC. I'M KEEPING THIS IN MY BACK POCKET FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. I love a black and white thinking king for real. But I also, something I'm thinking about since this is my third read of the chapter is that this sort of begins a conversation centered around the fact that Nick doesn't actually seem to understand his brother at all. His goals, his wants, etc. We the audience really don't know much about David beyond the fact that he's a shitty older brother, homophobic(maybe? i can't tell if he genuinely is or if he made a big deal of nick being with a man purely because it's his brother whom he doesn't like and wants to make life difficult for, regardless)
so nick went six whole months of being in the house with his brother and did not ask about why david and jess broke up until right this minute-- obviously for plot reasons i'm sure, but like... was he just avoiding david the whole time? i'm sure it's very possible they avoided each other as often as they could since they don't get along and this was how their last actual interaction went.
which i think is important to bring up again because while nick did have a good reason to bite david's head off given the way things went a few books ago, his mum told him that she told david he needed to be respectful and david really was just making basic polite conversation in this moment. is it award worthy? no, but he attempted civility and i think that's a solid sign of growth.
this moment stuck out to me, i think because david might be joking but also because it seems like david has succumbed to his fate as a "bad person" in not only nick's eyes but everyone's eyes including his own. something sarah told nick a few chapters ago was basically that nick didn't exactly have a great example for what a healthy relationship looks like-- david also didn't. this isn't to excuse the fact that david cheated but it is quite literally backed by statistics that people who've had their parents cheat on each other are more likely to cheat on their partners themselves. NOT ALWAYS, obviously, but when you're impressionable and see your role model doing something, it becomes normalized. i think david as a character seems to struggle a lot with empathy from what we've seen of him so i wouldn't be surprised if he also just doesn't have empathy for the fact that he cheated, especially with the "you might be next line" which is said rather casually. also loved nick's "like fuck i will" because you know what, yeah. if you want to break the cycle you really have to fucking work for it and nick's down to work for it.
i LOVE the genuine fucking shock on nick's face when david says he's going to paris. like the genuine surprise? incredible.
Now, what I really like about this is that David gives Nick a pretty healthy reality check, which has been a theme of this book. Nick puts on a mask, he struggles a lot with black and white thinking. He can only be "good" or "bad" never meh or gray or in the middle, and likewise David can't be either. I really was unsurprised that David mentioned that Nick holds both himself and David to this impossibly perfect standard because from what we've seen (and in the flashback), it seems like Stephane and lowkey Sarah pitted the boys against each other pretty early on. Why wouldn't Nick hold David to the same standard their dad holds them to when that's who he learned it from? I also liked that David says: "You can think I'm evil all you want." It's very much a laying all his cards out thing, especially since he's going to be in Paris where he and Nick are unlikely to see each other again without real effort to do so. David, unlike Nick, has already acknowledged his own flaws and misgivings for what they are. I also just don't think David is an evil person or character, I think he just fell victim to needing to be a papercut out antagonist in book 4.
I LOVE THESE FLASHBACKS SO MUCH. and what I like about this one is that David is having a VERY real emotion children of divorce go through. "You made my other parent go away. Why? Why did you do that?" kids do NOT understand the ins and outs of divorce and young David isn't wrong for being that angry about it, he's a kid. But what I gather from this is that Sarah probably didn't know how to handle David's emotions on top of her own, and thus looked to her "easier" child to checkup on. I'd also argue Nick probably made himself the easier child to protect his mum since David was being the way he was. "I'll be the good kid so my mommy doesn't stress out so much" (me too king), but what does this communicate to David? It communicates that Nick is Sarah's favorite. So naturally, I think David tried to earn Stephane's favoritism and realized it's literally impossible to achieve and likely just gave up given how resigned he seems in this chapter. David doesn't waste his energy putting on the same airs Nick does and I find that dynamic fascinating. At the very least David Nelson is completely himself even though that version is often shitty.
this really got to me because like, rereading that old nelson-spring dinner chapter i really do think that david is just starving for attention and sought it out in every way even if it meant being a fucking ASSHOLE to do so, it was a shitty attempt at earning his father's favor and obviously it blew up in his face but like. Idk. It is really hard for me sometimes to take that scene seriously because I'm very aware that Nick and Charlie were never in any real danger and I was in a situation where my sibling outed me and I was in danger so it's harder for me to have empathy or even like that specific moment in the series beyond liking that Nick finally stood up for himself.
"it ain't me babe" came on while i hit this bit and like wow. yeah you know what i'll say it. both david and nick are responsible for their dynamic especially now that they're older. they'll never be able to go back in time to be better but as shitty as David was and I do acknowledge he VERY OBVIOUSLY SUCKED AS AN OLDER BROTHER, we do not have enough context for how their dynamic has played out across their lives and I don't even think it's that important. I think what matters is that they both really needed to be in counseling while their parents were divorcing but that never happened, so.
now this! this is interesting. something im always curious about and for context-- i have six fucking siblings. i don't actually think nick knows his brother very well which is insane to me bc he only has the one. i think nick's made assumptions about david and kept his distance to protect himself but we as the audience don't even know what david was getting his degree in. although something i've noticed about HS is that we are missing a lot of smaller details about the nelson family in comparison to the Spring family which is both understandable as a writer but frustrating for me as a reader because these things matter when we're talking about character dynamics. like i think david went to scotland for school, right? which is also interesting to me bc like hm... was that the furthest away from all his family he could get?
I really do feel like this is the first time David's stance on their family situation has been acknowledged on page. "He hurt me too" carries so much weight bc so far it seems like Nick has barely been able to acknowledge his own hurt regarding his parents' divorce, but seeing that flashback-- David was clearly effected viscerally and Sarah lowkey dropped the ball on that, which is realistic.
genuinely made me a little teary eyed like wow you never really escape from being the hurt children you were, huh. siri play "when i grow up" from matilda the musical please. And my final piece of analysis for this chapter, although maybe I will do a write up on like... cheating and infidelity both as a literary device and also a very real world psychological problem. I think people forget that EVERYTHING a parent does whether it's cheat, do drugs, alcohol, whatever, makes their children far more likely to do those things themselves because it becomes normalized. yes there are exceptions and people do beat out statistics (I'm the statistic beater), but breaking out and doing better is incredibly fucking hard. i think maybe im emotionally too close to the whole cheating aspect of this situation in hs bc my parents and then my stepparents literally got together through cheating on their previous partners and then proceeded to cheat on each other and i witnessed almost all of it multiple times over and obviously it effected me. I just don't think Nick and David's dynamic is as simple as: "David's a homophobic bully of a brother" it's also Sarah was a permissive parent and Stephane was absent and so many other things. Okay, the last bit for real.
i really like the design choice of david being not only shorter than nick but also thinner as well because i think it does a lot of physical storytelling beyond just like differentiating them as siblings. david is smaller, he's not as significant; he takes up less space than nick does on page and seemingly in their family as well.
