#ken!!

[minyard-05]

today i learn about the NASA Photo of the Day Archive.

+ I think about Adrian who save the photo of every important date in a journal with what happen. it is how he journal to remember the happy days.

++ i think how you say Adrian dies first. I think about Seth find this journal. I think about Seth find the photo day of Adrian's death. He prints. He keep in his wallet, worn from so much touch every day until he die. he start his own similar journal of good days because feels he share these with Adrian.

+++i think about Seth is bury with this photo + journal in his hand so he can see Adrian in death to share these memory he has save to tell him about.

ken. ken. my friend. how are you doing more damage to my boys than i am. i love this idea so much it fits so perfectly

adrian would be obsessed with the nasa photo archive, i can definitely see him carefully printing out all the photos for his good days and sticking them into a journal he keeps. the archive starts after him and zarah were born, but the first photo in there is definitely rayne's birthday in 1997, which is this picture

so yeah i absolutely love this idea. he'd keep such good track of all the pictures, write down little entries for each one. years later he goes back and finds the picture from the day he and seth met, backdates it in his journal. its this one

seth finding the journal....... u got me tearing up now ken i love them SO bad. the archive doesn't have pictures for when adrian dies (its a while from now), but i think it's the Andromeda galaxy, adrians favourite constellation. just feels right that way yk? seth keeping it in his wallet for those four years as well...... my heart 😭

(adrians space photo journal is 100% canon for him now, this will be making an appearance in losing my religion)

thank you so much for this ask <3

tagging my adrian ppl because this is just too good @kevindavidday @absolutely-existing @falafels @catalinaday @you-know-i-get-itt @stardoused @captain-sunshine-11 @the-13th-omniscient @aftgphoenix @sehruncreative @tessasilverswan @belshouseofdreams @codename-adler @arsonistblue @aryrosealynn

[ultra-vibin]

!!! HE !!!

[minyard-05]

i see your reblog + nosey

what popular fan theories aaron and/or seth you do not like? [no pressure answer this!]

ok i'm gonna be a hater for a sec and i want to preface this by saying this is not directed at anybody specific at all, it's just a general trend that i've come to like less and less the more i see it

i'm not a fan of the fanon variants of aaron/seth where they're like. super well adjusted and talking honestly about their addictions or their homophobia. because they're always using like really carefully selected therapy-speak, and holding themselves accountable and apologising and it's like. aaron had to get blackmailed into going to therapy. seth never has a calm conversation with anyone at all in the short time he's in the books, and my take is that they're both just really not that self-aware.

and i get that obviously everyone has their own interpretations and versions of the characters that they like and want to play with and again, i'm not saying that any of this is bad necessarily. it's just more of a me thing where like. at first i was really excited that more peope were talking about aaron and seth as characters, because i think they're really interesting and there's a lot you can do with them. but then. all i saw was posts like "seth wakes up from a coma and realises he likes men lol" and "aaron was never actually homophobic, he just didn't like the way nicky talked about people!" ok but it could be both.

that first one i don't mind much, i also subscribe to that belief on occasion partially bc i think it's funny and then i was like. Wait you're all serious about this.

now this might just be me because personally i really like stories where characters have to just face their own shit and deal with themselves, and i like when that's more of a journey, you know? like if seth gordon did wake up from a coma and decided he thought men were attractive, great, sign me up. but he's not gonna be there a day later joking about wanting his teammates to make out with him. like that's just not what his character is like.

same with aaron. i don't think he's going to come to terms with what happened with his mother and his childhood in the time he's at PSU, and i really don't think it's going to happen with betsy dobson. i love betsy but she's the opposite of a good therapist for aaron, she's objectively biased by virtue of what she already knows about the twins before aaron starts talking to her, and she and andrew have too close of a relationship for her to professionally step back far enough to work with the twins on an equal standing. betsy is the only way andrew will talk to aaron, so aaron has to cave because there's nothing else that he can do. ok this is a different post so i'll cut off there for a min

TO CONCLUDE

none of this is to say that people who like or write those versions of seth and aaron are doing it wrong. i am just some guy on the internet, i have 0 authority over anything. but it's something i've noticed as more people start to appreciate these characters more, it feels like they get watered down and sanitized to the point they're virtually unrecognisable to their canon selves. and i just feel like it's kind of unfair and reductive in a sense, because there's so much more that we could be doing with them.

i do have to admit that they're obviously side characters, so it's unlikely they'll ever garner the same level of interest that characters like andrew, kevin, or neil do, aside from me and my fellow weirdos ofc. so it's kind of natural that people will just put them in the fics and scenarios they enjoy, most of which will not include the level of analysis that i do for fun around here, but that's just me.

[minyard-05]

you think seth tries learning more about space for Adrian + first time he sees Butterfly Nebula he feel deep inside some where it is how reality-altering is how he feels about Adrian come into his life? probably i can not put this in words correct, but i see this + think my own partner, how it feels we come together... idk. hope you are well aaron <3

answering this to further motivate myself to work through physics and ken i gotta say. aughhhhh. i can always rely on you to bring the most heartwrenching ideas into my inbox never stop pls

but yeah i kind of love this. butterfly nebula especially shoutout my beloved. now i don't know how much seth would look into space stuff on his own (probably not in those first few years) but i do think that a few months into him & adrian's study routine he gets him to explain stuff outside of what adrian is actually tutoring him in. like first off it's because adrian has a textbook on statistical mechanics and seths like fuck that sounds even worse than regular statistics and adrian goes yeah it is but it's not taught in your class. and stops there. and seths like well what is it. so adrian explains it and it actually kind of makes sense (adrian eventually guesses that seth is trying to distract him from the actual stuff they have to do) (it worked) but next time seth asks, he will explain it. adrian is one of those people who hates small talk because he thinks he doesn't know how it works (autism), and also hates talking about himself (introverted) but he can and will talk at length about stuff he's interested in, especially math and science, especially space. if you want to get more than a sentence out of him just say you don't know the difference between an Apollo capsule and a Saturn V launch vehicle and he's unstoppable.

i think seth is also not that talkative of a person, but he's actually a pretty good listener. again i'm extrapolating from data (10 pages in the book) but because we only ever see him riled up or angry, i think he can be a very different person behind closed doors. i also think the only person who has really seen this version of seth is allison (then eventually adrian). i think allison used to work on her fashion portfolio while seth laid on his bed and pretended to do his homework, and she used to just randomly talk to herself about whether that color worked or the shape of that cut, or if this jacket matched that skirt, etc etc. she assumed seth wasn't really listening, but he was taking in a lot of what she told him, whether she noticed it or not. i think he misses listening to allison when they're on the outs and after chapter three of losing my religion, and so when he realises he can trick adrian into talking for twenty minutes about a 50 year old rocket ship, it's like gold.

speaking of the butterfly nebula, there IS a bit in LMR where he borrows matts truck and goes on a really long drive by himself and winds up way out in the middle of nowhere, late at night. he's miles away from the city, pulls into a layby at the edge of a field and then gets out of the truck to turn his thoughts over and he sees the milky way, across the sky above him. and he's never seen it that clearly before and it kind of freaks him out for a minute but he can't stop staring at it.

friends @kevindavidday @absolutely-existing @falafels @catalinaday @you-know-i-get-itt @stardoused @captain-sunshine-11 @the-13th-omniscient @aftgphoenix @sehruncreative @tessasilverswan @belshouseofdreams @codename-adler @arsonistblue @aryrosealynn

[minyard-05]

makes me think of adrian

i hope you are well <3

love this. absolutely something adrian would do. zarah is the one explaining rpf to him

[minyard-05]

talk about seth/adrian hug? some thing specific or just imagine these men who never get any soft giving each other soft they deserve?

ohhhhh. i have such thought. much idea. no words.

it initially came from a picture that was suggested for my adrian board and i got strange about it (i'll put it at the end)

it's what you said exactly tho it's people who never take support or help or comfort because they don't think they need it, finally hitting the breaking point and needing to be held or to be allowed to slow down and breathe.

for adrian its like. he doesn't think about himself. doesn't consider his own limitations when the question of what can i do to help is so open ended. he's been a primary caretaker for both his sisters almost since they were born, and they have always come first, no matter what. he'll never regret that. but he's really bad at balancing the three of them at home. the first year after his dad died and his mom was arrested, he didn't slept until he passed out from exhaustion. he only ate after the girls had, so he knew they'd had enough. he spent every waking second making plans, backup plans, backup backup plans, figuring out how to pay the bills and put food on the table and pay for gas to get to work and take the girls to school and he was newly 18 and trying to run an entire life that he wasn't ready for and had almost no help with, and it nearly broke him. he's too much like his dad. he doesn't know how to ask for help, not when all he can do is give it, and he doesn't know how to slow down when he needs it.

seth is a slightly different case of it. seth is a character that i think about a lot in regards to toxic masculinity, especially in the canon time period. like seth was absolutely funneled into that hyper masculine, show-no-fear, boys don't cry, you hit like a fucking girl mindset and that mindset fucking infiltrates every corner of your life if you sink too deep into it. you start second guessing every single one of your actions, changing your facial expressions and how you stand, how you talk; because you rework your whole worldview around this idea that the world is an enemy and you are a weapon. it destroys people, and it isolates especially teenage boys from their families, their friends, their peers, because they become convinced that they cannot have even a fragment of weakness in them or someone will exploit it. it's not okay to cry or be vulnerable or need to talk to someone. it's not okay to be a real person. i think a lot of this is evident in how seth's attitude is depicted in canon, and it's part of what makes his character really difficult to get right, even though i try.

so i guess the major similarity of the two is that they're both stumbling through unlearning these ideas they know are hurting them and they know are wrong (adrian a little more than seth on that one), but it's really difficult to get rid of something that's been such a huge part of your life. unlearning shit like that is not easy!!!

in my mind it happens because they just both sort of snap at the same time, and they've been just barely holding on for weeks, feeling like they're trying not to breathe whenever they're apart, and when they're alone again they just need something to hold onto.

friends @kevindavidday @absolutely-existing @falafels @catalinaday @you-know-i-get-itt @stardoused @captain-sunshine-11 @the-13th-omniscient @aftgphoenix @sehruncreative @tessasilverswan @belshouseofdreams @codename-adler @arsonistblue

picture i mentioned ↓

i have no idea where it's from but i'm like 76% sure it came to me in a dream

[minyard-05]

ever do you think seth accidentally falls in heteronormativity with Adrian as he explore being bisexual? will adrian notice/care? <3

ooooo this is a really interesting question thank you ken

so for starters i think seth has a lot of both internalised and also external homophobia he needs to deal with, and i don't think adrian alone is enough to help him through all of it. technically speaking they kind of do "get together" within the time space of losing my religion, kind of because i wanted them to, but it's not like by the end of the fic seth is going "i'm happily bisexual and dating my boyfriend" like him reaching that level of self-understanding and acceptance is YEARS away, easily.

but i do think he spends a lot of time at the stage of "i'm not gay it's just you" like he's still fully in the trenches of "i know i like girls so i can't be gay" however, that theory doesn't account for adrian. but in seths mind it's easier to bend the lie to fit an anomaly than to rethink his entire knowledge of himself up to that point, right? (it's not just adrian, by the way, but that'll take him a while longer to figure out.)

now i'm actually not sure whether adrian would notice this or not. i think once or twice in later conversations he brings up seth being gay/bi/otherwise attracted to men or whatever and seth will firmly deny it, because he still won't let that door open in his head, he won't entertain the idea that he's 'one of them', he's just a regular guy, attracted to women exclusively, with one exception. and he'll insist it's only one exception. adrian i think kind of guesses that this probably isn't the case, but he won't argue it. he can tell seth is kind of struggling enough to fit adrian into the framework in his head, so he doesn't push it a lot. he will of course care because he cares about seth, but he'll do his best to let him sort of work through it at his own pace. he will occasionally rebuke seth's tendencies to almost slip into trying to fit them into a het template, you know? like he says "i'm not your housewife" a lot in those first few years, but while it will take them some time and some work to get to a point where seth can leave himself alone a bit more, they do get there <3

almost forgot my tags @kevindavidday @absolutely-existing @falafels @catalinaday @you-know-i-get-itt @stardoused @captain-sunshine-11 @the-13th-omniscient @aftgphoenix @sehruncreative @tessasilverswan @belshouseofdreams @codename-adler @arsonistblue @ajosm86 @aryrosealynn