Happy late Valentine’s Day 😭 this is so embarrassing to post i literally never make stuff like this but i am twenty years old i think i deserve to draw a couple smooches
so i think about AFTG as a tv show a lot, and while i think it IS most definitely doable, it would be difficult to do right. i would have it 3 seasons, 10/12 episodes per season. exy games are done in montages with a series of action shots intercut with commentary, probably music playing overtop. the casting would be difficult to get right, and the level of scar makeup on neil alone would be intense. i think it’d probably have to be an 18 due purely to violence, alcohol and drug use, all the usual stuff. you could probably get it down to a 15 if you tried but i feel like that would water down a lot of what makes it such a unique series which is how messy and dark a lot of it is.
the tricky bit, in my opinion, is actually teaching the audience about the characters. 70% of AFTG is neil talking to himself, honestly. a not insignificant amount of what we know about kevin, riko, andrew, etc, is stuff that neil already knows and tells us through his internal monologue. now you could do a lot of this with neil simply narrating parts of the story, which would work, but personally protagonist narration to me feels tacky. of course, some of these background details are provided to us through characters like nicky or matt, which is immensely helpful, but at the start of TFC, neil just knows stuff about the foxes, which is a little difficult to convey without neil himself telling us this stuff as the story progresses. my personal solution to this would be to alter certain parts of the dialogue so that the characters tell the story through what they give away individually (for example, when neil and wymack meet at the start, neil says something about janie smalls (he knows about it), then about how wymack only recruits kids from broken homes. in the book, this is all internal, so the audience would need this transmitted in some way to then be curious about why wymack wanted neil and why neil was so insistent that he couldn’t go.) i’d also keep neil knowing kevin a secret until the binder is revealed– that reveals neil’s motivation to not join the foxes after he’s already there. it also means that when neil provides ‘half truths’ to andrew to justify that he’s not one of riko’s spies, he’s also justifying himself to the audience. we learn about neil at the same pace the foxes do, in a way.
but the narration issue this becomes a whole NEW problem considering his own backstory, his multiple identities– neil or somebody else has to tell the audience that neil josten is an alias or they won’t get it. (personally, i’d start the first episode with neil burning his mother’s car, 'don’t stop, don’t slow down, be anybody but yourself, never be anybody for too long’, then a one year later skip to the actual start of the book. this gives the audience a piece of neil’s backstory to intrigue him to his character, without revealing too much of who he really is.)
aaron and andrew themselves are an enigma on their own. either you stumble across the perfect set of twins, who are both actors, somehow, or you cast a really good actor who is able to pull them off as individual people whilst also capturing the intricacies of how they interact with each other. i think this could be done with the latter solution, and as it would decrease the amount of times theyre in a shot together, it might hint cinematically at their cracks in their relationship, a subplot further explored as neil gets to know his team.
i’ve got pages and pages of notes on this concept, if anybody would like to hear more about it i’d be happy to talk :)
tfc trailer would go so insanely hard because i’d end it with the bit on KF where the crowd all starts chanting KING KING KING and the camera cuts progressively faster between neil and kevin and andrew in the crowd and then right before riko steps onstage we get black screen and then the date the season comes out. Somebody give me infinite money i could DO IT
listen listen listen. it opens with the sound of the flick of a match, then shows a hand holding a cigarette, then shows a burning car with someone (neil) silhouetted in front of it. then the camera pans from neil’s shoes scuffing against the ground and slowly up to his face and while it does that it also rotates a little and he tilts his head up to look at the sky and there’s v/o of “i told you i wasn’t ready” “you also said you wouldn’t play with me [cut to gorgeous green eyes]* but here you are”. cut to womack walking and neil following hesitantly, then cut to that one scene where they’re all in the lounge and it slowly pans across the room (andrew isn’t there rn for reasons)** then v/o “it’s about second chances, neil. second, third, fourth, whatever” then cut to neil and kevin standing outside the court with kevin and neil holding on to the same racquet and kevin “so give your game to me”. then cut to the stadium, v/o of aaron saying “lights!” and then lights flood the stadium, and cut to the same still but now there are people in the stadium and they’re cheering, and then cut to the game (and the music picks up now) and someone is running and gets shoved into the wall, and then cut to kevin shoving seth into the wall, and then cut to someone punching someone, and then cut to a manic grin and a racquet crashing into neil’s stomach, and then cut to the monsters knocking back shots at eden’s, and then cut to neil running, and slowly there’s KING KING KING building up in the background, and then sharp cut to riko’s face, and then riko slowly smiles, and now there’s cheering and KING KING KING and then it all cuts off. and the screen is black. and then neil is looking hauntedly into the mirror and taking out his contacts and then his very very blue eyes look directly into the camera. and then “ALL FOR THE GAME: in cinemas this july”
just one of the most tender and nuanced and beautiful romances I think I’ve ever read??? and political intrigue and machinations that still blow my mind after like ¾ reads??? I haven’t read nearly enough captive prince fic so recs are so welcome
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