Thea Muldani - Tumblr Posts
raise your hand if you're probably going to burst into tears on page one of The Sunshine Court.
🙋🏽‍♂️
“but your honour, kevin’s gay” SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP all i see is two queens
five curiosities for the next book, after reading the sunshine court
a non-exhaustive list, but five things i'm curious to (hopefully) find out more about in TSC2, or that i have questions about still:
what happened at the trojans' fall banquet (presumably jeremy's first year)? it's a Scandal, and jeremy cannot stand to be around bryson, and annalise has never forgiven him for sticking with exy after that, despite having attended all his games in high school. given the allusions to his stepfather, and also his step-grandfather being a congressman, i can see how jeremy's sexuality might be relevant to the situation—especially if we read into lucas' stiff apology and shame at his implication about jeremy and jean as being born from more than just common decency, but rather knowledge of this being a previous sticking point in terms of jeremy's scandals—but i also keep thinking about what cat said. jeremy has—three. two brothers, one sister. the way she says it, how it sticks out to jean as an odd switch, and the fact that we've only met two siblings – it makes me wonder what happened to the third. or if that's even the right question to ask, regarding jeremy's siblings.
elodie. i'm curious if we learn anything about what happened—by and large, i kinda hope not, if only because then jean has to too, unless it turns out stuart is lying, but that's a very different kind of fallout. (i don't actively theorise he is—at some point, these kids will run out of tolerance for ghost stories coming back to life—but i think its possibility ought to be considered, at least). i think we'll get more flashes of her from jean's thoughts, though, and i anticipate lots of heartbreak lmao
lucas. assuming stuart's contact comes through, and neil's hit goes ahead, we've got lucas in the aftermath of finding out his brother is a monster, and jean saying not to call the police, and then possibly his brother being dead. if it happens any other day—if it happens in west virginia, especially—i suspect lucas might be able to look at it like another domino in the ravens machine falling down, or even that something horrible happened to him when he returned home, but if it's still in LA, after what he did to jean, after jean said no cops-------i can see how that might twist into something more suspicious. who knows! i'm curious to see what happens there. grayson is a monster, but he is still lucas' brother. aaron and kevin still have complicated grief about tilda and riko, and they were their direct, constant abusers; cass never learned until after the fact, and lucas is in a complex space between the two parts of that spectrum. if grayson dies, i think the fallout will be unavoidable for exploration
this is a small one but man, i just want to keep seeing jean's list grow. it tears something out of me every time, and stitches me back together, and i want to go through that over and over, because i want to see a jean who not only hears that his life is his and worth living, but a jean who learns to believe it too
i'm just kinda assuming we see the foxes again, because i remember nora's character list having new details about characters who didn't show up in this one, but i'm also quietly hoping for more thea. their scene made me ache, and he'd never had good defenses against thea, and kevin knew that. jean would kill him for bringing her here made my heart do the !! double-tap. i'm extremely invested in jean, thea and kevin as a unit, and it would be so incredibly wonderful to see more
alr one hc before i do my work: thea's favourite nickname for kevin is "kebin" and it's because he hates it so much
One thing I dislike about the aftg fandom is that you all keep forgetting Kevin has a hot muscle mommy girlfriend. Justice for Thea Muldani
hmmmm thinking about Kevin Day
does anyone know a fic that addresses the gross age gap between kevin and thea?? i see it talked abt on here and tiktok but never in a fic and i would love to read one
kev???? KEV????? NICKNAMES were an OPTION????
*screams into a pillow*
my input into the thea discourse in the aftg fandom
tw: rape, SA, abuse, violence
spoilers ahead !!! full disclosure: these are my opinions and no one is obligated to agree w me but if u don't i'm literally begging u pls explain urself properly in replies or just don't engage. it's rlly not that deep i just can't w mfs who just say shit like "ur wrong" without giving it any real thought and acting mature and explaining their opinion. if ur a hardcore thea hater/lover honestly just do the smart thing and don't even read on. thanks pooks !!!
gotta preface this by saying: i am not a thea hater. she's done a lot of things wrong that i'll go into but i don't have a strong hatred or even dislike for her. that being said i'm fully aware that if there's anything that will get the aftg fandom riled up it's thea muldani or the extra content. one of those.
first off, i'm well aware that thea is very much a victim of the nest, as much as jean or kevin. and also we don't even fully know how deeply thea was entrenched in the shit that went down in the nest, all we know is that she probably didn't abuse kevin or jean the way others did, considering how she interacts w them in tsc. one of the main criticisms i see of thea is how she "handled" the whole situation w riko and kevin and finding out all of riko's abuse. ppl didn't like her "no harm no foul" attitude re: kevin's broken hand. i get this, considering it wasn't rlly "no harm no foul" given the lasting trauma left on kevin from the incident, and also how long he spent recovering. that shit leaves a long-term impact on ppl and riko still remains kevin's abuser, and thea was wrong for considering it to be "no harm no foul" bc there was harm done. that being said, i think ppl need to be aware that the nest was very much a cult, as neil so aptly puts it. and tbh i have had very little experiences w these sort of environments but i do know that the nest's mentality likely had a long-term impact on thea asw. no matter how deep the abuse went w the other ravens, they were all still subject to the deep-rooted competition and fear that everyone experiences in the nest. idk the full extent of it, but it's pretty safe to assume that thea (given how good of a player she is) is pretty deep in all the cult mentality. this isn't an easy thing to just grow out of, and a lot of the brainwashing that went on in the nest probably stuck w thea and contributed to her responses to finding out exactly what happened to jean and kevin in the nest.
one of the things i most dislike abt thea is the whole conversation between her and jean in tsc. i appreciate that she cares about jean and sort of took him under her wing, but i feel like what rlly stuck w me abt it all was the whole "tell me you weren't up to your old tricks again" line. obv this pissed a lot of ppl off in the fandom too, so i'm just gonna say my piece briefly; thea referring to the older ravens repeatedly raping jean on riko's orders as jean's "tricks" is fucked up. she probably didn't know that jean wasn't consenting and she didn't know riko ordered it, but she did know that jean was a child at the time and can't legally give consent, and she did know that it wasn't like he fucked his way up to the top cos he's had his number from the beginning. she was an adult at the time, and should've done more to protect jean. still, it's obvious why she didn't, cos again, she was also a victim of the nest, and was definitely not in the best position to help jean. that being said, her line does imply that it was jean's choice/fault for messing around and the wording is just pretty fucked, so i'm not gonna completely absolve her of any responsibility in this convo just cos she was also a victim.
another thing i see when ppl r responding to thea criticism is referring to the criticism as victim blaming. tbf, a good amount of it probably is, but i think there are still a lot of things to criticise about her, and just dismissing it as "blaming the victim" is a disservice to the ppl trying to make a valid point. stating that the way thea responded to finding out abt riko's abuse towards jean and kevin was wrong and careless isn't victim blaming. victim blaming is, as the term suggests, blaming the victim of a situation for the situation they're in. listen. thea is not a victim of riko's abuse, at least not in the same way jean and kevin are. thea was a victim of the nest, yes, but it's pretty clear that what jean and kevin experienced was out of her hands, and not on the same level (esp jean. idk what rlly went down between kevin and riko before the hand breaking incident). at the end of the day, i think the way thea dealt w the issue of riko and his treatment of kevin and jean was thoughtless, and pretty dismissive. but it also bears remembering that there wasn't much for her to do by the time she found out. riko died shortly afterwards, kevin took his place as the best striker on the court and jean was sent to the trojans to heal and recuperate. her response could've been more...sensitive (i don't think that's the right word but we'll go with it) but still, y'all will complain, but what was she supposed to do? nora already stated that she was angry at riko, but riko died soon after and other than her anger, there was nothing else for thea to do in her response.
lastly, another argument levelled at thea is re her relationship w kevin. i actually am not sure abt their age gap (i think kevin was 15 and thea was 18 when they first met???) but i do know that their relationship didn't start properly until kevin was an adult and a player for the ravens. i really don't see the problem with this, considering three years (as far as i know, it is three years) isn't a HUGE gap in maturity and by the time they were together they were both very much consenting adults. as far as we know, thea didn't make any moves on kevin when he was a minor, and (if i'm correct) kevin being 18 and thea being 21 when they first properly started getting together isn't anything problematic. they're in similar stages of life, in a very close environment that's toxic, yes, but that they're both familiar with, and it's clear that the feelings they have for each other aren't the same as the violent, repressed sexual feelings held by some of the other ravens. they do genuinely care about each other on some emotional level, much as the fandom may want to deny it, and i don't really think there was anything wrong with their relationship re: consent and the age gap.
anyway, that's really all i have to say except that i do think thea is a complicated and honestly pretty realistic character, given the horrific circumstances she experienced in the nest. i think the fandom is well within their rights to criticise her actions but it bears remembering that she is just a human being and is never going to be perfect, and i think the way she acts is very real and true to her personality and circumstances and she makes a lot of mistakes, but that's just the human condition. it's also insane how much hate thea receives when she's honestly pretty on par with most of the other aftg characters on the moral "scale", if that even exists here. it's pretty baffling how much hate thea receives when she doesn't act all that differently to andrew, neil and kevin. it erases a lot of her complexity and does a disservice to her character (which, if you think about it, we don't know all that much about) to just label her as a purely "good" or "bad" character. aftg is not meant to be portraying conventionally "good" people, and i just think all the thea discourse is really interesting to put under a microscope and dissect.
thanks for reading and i will say it again: if u don't agree with me, that's fine, feel free to explain ur opinions and ur side of things. if ur just gonna be bitching and moaning abt how wrong i am or how much u hate/love thea, take it elsewhere. just don't engage. how easy is that??? just keep scrolling.
Love it!
“but your honour, kevin’s gay” SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP all i see is two queens