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PLEASE tell me all about your textual support for Aurora/Declan, i am LISTENING 👀🙏🏻

This is heinously late and I'm so sorry for that 😭 but this is one of my FAVOURITE things to think about.

Aurora is such an interesting character to me, particularly in relation to Declan. For all that Ronan spends all of TRC furious that Declan has denied Aurora personhood ("She's nothing without Dad") and trying to keep her awake, it's actually through Declan's eyes that she really comes alive. Ronan's version of his mother is more one-dimensional than Declan's, ironically enough, even though he's the one who supposedly 'loves her more.' It's Declan who's spent his life grappling with the philosophical implications of her dreamt-ness and her replacement of his actual mother (which, in a stunning parenting move by Niall, only he seems to remember) and as a result, his feelings toward her are considerably more complicated than his brothers' and he's the only one who really seems to think deeply about her.

The mystery Aurora is shrouded in for Declan turns her into almost this... sinister figure in his mind. It's like - Niall is this known entity for Declan right? He doesn't think of him in nearly the same lionizing light Ronan does, because he actually knew Niall. He doesn't need to create a mythology around him the way Ronan has. His "hatred" for Niall is not only comparitively straightforward, it's self-aware. He knows exactly what his grievances with his father are and he knows that he doesn't even really hate him.

But with Aurora, he skirts around the thought of her. He can't even look his complicated feelings for her head-on. She's inscrutable to him, and that's kind of terrifying in a psych-thriller kind of way.

There's this unease that he associates with her in the text, that's just not there when he thinks about Niall. He's constantly second-guessing himself when it comes to Aurora re: how much did she know, how real she was etc. In Greywaren, there's this part where he's thinking about when he was sick as a child. And it's fascinating to me because there's this implication there that he didn't feel safe in the house with Aurora until Niall came back. He only relaxes and goes to sleep when Niall comes home. And it adds to this general malaise that Declan associates with Aurora.

I've talked before about how the secrets Declan is forced to keep are an allegory of sexual abuse, and in that light it's kind of damning when you consider that in the Lynch household, the arbiter of secrets is Aurora, not Niall. Throughout the Declan Christmas short, it's Aurora who's reinforcing the importance of secrets, who makes him help her hide them. She's the one who tells Declan that he has to keep Matthew's origin a secret. And in MI, it's Aurora who first tells Ronan that he needs to hide his dreaming and never show his dreams to anyone. So if we're looking at the text through the lens of allegory-for-csa, Aurora's position in the household becomes much more sinister because a lot of the harm that's been done to the kids and particularly Declan is attributable directly to her.

And then there's the fact that all the Ashleys' looked like her - there's something Freudian going on there for sure.

tl;dr while the textual evidence is slim lol it is there if you wanna see it and I am looking with a magnifying glass. Was any of this done with authorial intent? Probably not, but who cares?

And this is where stuff diverts from the text itself and veers more into my spin on things, but everything about Aurora/Declan becomes insanely compelling to me when you think about it in relation to Mor. Mor is the hole inside Aurora. Imagine you're a young woman who was molested her whole life by a family member and now you're out-of-touch with your own emotions and you have this kid and you think you love him with this man and you think you love him too. But you know you're fucking them up, so you and your husband dream a version of you that's perfect. She's the perfect wife and the perfect mother and you've sanded down all the edges and sharp, spiky parts that make you you because you think that's the version of yourself your family deserves and then you leave. But you can't dream anything without putting your pain inside it. So you have this hollow half-woman walking around with a pain inside her she doesn't know how she got and a life she doesn't remember and the only person who seems to have any answers is this kid that she think is her own but is he really? And in her attempt to feel the shape of the hole in her she re-enacts your trauma on your kid.

I am EATING GLASS. The cycles are CYCLING. NO ONE talk to me.

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I hope Gansey knows that he is to me what Glendower is to him

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canonly accurate jerejean, andreil and kevin

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the urge to apply to be a flight attendant is STRONG today

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i ordered my first vibrator. a tiny bullet vibrator. however, my order seems to have arrived with this terrifying rabbit toy and some pleasure air thing and i think they made a mistake with the order and now i have two things which are extremely intimidating which i got by accident for free uhhhhhhhh

i know that for some people this would be great news but for someone who specifically bought the least intimidating vibrator possible ummmm i’m afraid. i don’t know where to hide them and i don’t live alone THATS WHY I BOUGHT A TINY BULLET VIBRATOR IN THE FIRST PLACE

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“i don’t think these fish are real”

“okay, god”

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the urge to write stories and songs and poems and fics and diaries and letters and odes and grocery lists and notes and write and write and write and write and write

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We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

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i literally had to take a moment and practice deep breathing before i left the bathroom because apparently i have issues

i’m in the bathroom at work reading the newest This Time, With Feeling by ocean adjacent because it’s literally the best fic in the world and every time i get an update i scream

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i’m in the bathroom at work reading the newest This Time, With Feeling by ocean adjacent because it’s literally the best fic in the world and every time i get an update i scream

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Having your main anxiety response be Avoidance is crazy cause you'll think you're chillin and then one day you're like waitttt I've been paralyzed with fear this whole time. Damn

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btw it is still illegal to make money off of fanfiction. in case you guys forgot

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"We need more complex female characters" you guys can't even handle Chappell Roan, Real Life Woman with Boundaries

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once again, don’t tag the ship in your post if your post is slandering it. please and thank you.

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oh my god the absolute blast of joy and excitement I just got when i got a comment on a fic from a fic writer who i'm kind of obsessed with and think is absolutely brilliant? like i need to restrain myself from replying to their comment by fangirling about THEIR fic???

EEEEEEEEEE

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jean left the nest which is not that far from tennessee and it made all the ravens mad but now hes thriving (ish) in LA so essentially what im saying is the sunshine court is pink pony club send post