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So TRC where everyone dresses like Blue?

Concept

TRC where everything is the same but it’s set in the 80s

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THE PINING, THE FRAGILITY, THE DISCOVERIES, THE TRUST

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alright. i’m attempting to form some coherent sentences about my Very Strong Feelings about the Sun card in the Raven’s Prophecy tarot as pertaining to TRC.

listen. i have never felt a card more. like a punch to the gut. i don’t know if all this was intended by Maggie when she made the designs for the cards… the accompanying book does say some things about what the little orbs of light represent but here’s my personal take. 

(The Raven’s Prophecy Tarot by Maggie Stiefvater © 2015 Llewellyn Worldwide)

so, the main elements in this card - the magician’s hands cupping the light (are you crying yet?) the light in this context just represents so much of ronan for me. he always dreamt about light, he kept dreaming about light as he was being unmade. he dreamt himself a radiant baby brother (on the winter solstice no less?). the lightning bugs - integral to the landscape of the barns, representing that home and belonging and safety, the paradise lost (and happily regained). the ORBS, when he’s up on that barn after having kissed adam, arms raised, having somehow caught happiness. so many positive feelings…

then ronan’s quest to bring some of that joy to adam, even before anything more overtly romantic. getting him out of his head, away from the major stresses of his life, doing dumb shit. he’d have done anything for that genuine adam smile. then trying to ease his life a bit with his courting gifts…

and finally, here in this card, success: the magician has received that light. he caught a bit of happiness too. allowed himself to accept the good. allowed himself to want the magical boy, accepted a place in his world. maybe no longer believing that the right way always has to be painful? that maybe you can just have what you want. maybe other equations could apply - like “A joy shared is a double joy. A burden shared is half a burden,” as that one proverb goes.

(and a little bonus observation - it’s not the literal giant sun like in other decks. it’s just a little flame. “a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.” - that’s a quote from james keller, a catholic priest of irish ancestry. not sure how pertinent this last part is to anything at all, but it delights me.)

in summary i love it and i don’t care if i’m reading too much into it. come read too much into it with me, i would very much like to hear your raven’s prophecy sun card thoughts. or thoughts on other cards! i will definitely be coming back with at least one more post - about the ace of cups.

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Baby Chainsaw was blind and bald and ugly and so very helpless. A “tiny foundling, featherless mouth still a baby’s smile, wings still days and nights and days away from flight.” This is pointed out many times in the book and is factually true. Raven hatchlings are fucking goblins with almost comically giant beaks compared to the rest of their bodies, so the image is clearly not “baby” chainsaw, but just Chainsaw. But otherwise, I love the rest of this.

ok, time for my Very Strong Feelings about the Raven’s Prophecy tarot, part 2. let’s talk about the ace of cups. the great potential for love. the spring, the source. like an acorn holding the oak tree within it, like the universe in a grain of sand - baby chainsaw. what whaaat?

(The Raven’s Prophecy Tarot by Maggie Stiefvater © 2015 Llewellyn Worldwide)

ok tbh i don’t know if this was supposed to actually be baby chainsaw. aren’t baby birds super ugly? or was that baby crows? either way, it’s a solitary raven looking up at us which makes me think of that scene where chainsaw goggles up at blue and adam. so chainsaw it is damn it.

alright, LISTEN. baby chainsaw is Ronan’s gateway to revealing his dreaming. he drunkenly admits to finding her in his head right then and there in the church. and with the official reveal at the end of book 1 (again in a church btw) - it’s still her - “i took chainsaw out of my dreams.” she is the cracking of the door that allows Ronan to show his whole weird self to the people who love him. secrets isolate, because what if someone finds out about you and rejects you based on that? he’s scared, he doesn’t know *what* he is, but.. what was that quote about having to endure the ordeal of being known in order to be loved? having to be vulnerable is necessary to create an authentic bond with the people he loves. he’s ready to be loved, he’s ready to reveal the most secret, weirdest parts of himself. and chainsaw’s the key. (and potentially the emotional support to get through it all).

speaking of being ready for love - “she was his heart finally laid bare”, yeah? a small dark part of himself, but one he could care for and nurture and love, amidst a very self destructive and turbulent time in his life. the first steps of self care and self love, the journey whose culmination he reaches when he stretches his arm out to the night horror in the 4th of july dream, realizing he doesn’t hate himself anymore. his nightmares are morphing, and he’s finally strong enough to face those embodiments of his fear and rejection of himself. he’s ready to accept himself, to stop keeping the other secret from himself. and later on, of course, to allow himself to believe he deserves good things. and go after them.

taking out chainsaw triggered a wide-reaching emotional domino effect and i feel it flooding through me every time i see this card <3 <3 <3 baby chainsaw!!!!

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i can feel the trc fandom coming back to life and tbh thats the best thing ever,,, i missed y'all

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Considering that Fountain Bookstore sold out of the 1000 signed/doodled copies within hours of the announcement I think “excited” is an understatement. 

Hey, friend, it looks like people are excited to see you again (I’m excited for them to see you too)

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I’m holy, I want you to know it 

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Light, or something like light, reflected off it onto Ronan’s chin and cheeks, rendering him stark and handsome and terrifying and someone else.

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sing me to sleep

Sing me to sleep

Im tired and I Want to go to bed

(part 1)

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The greywarren and his magician

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Sing me to sleep

Sing me to sleep

I don’t want to wake up on my own anymore

(Part 2)

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when you realize that one of the very first things the series establishes about adam is that he’s a very pragmatic and careful and responsible person, but also that he and ronan dragged each other behind a moving car for fun

when you realize that despite their bickering, adam actually relaxes completely around ronan and sometimes even lets himself forget his responsibilities for a little while when they’re together

when you realize that ronan actually brings out adam’s carefree side more frequently than any of the other characters

when you realize that adam’s pov chapters tend to be calmer and more focused on the present when ronan is there with him

when you realize that ronan was making adam quiet all along

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Uprising by Neil Burnell Wistmans Wood -  www.neilburnell.com

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It’s been months since I read this and the ocean is still burning tbh.

Follow me on: twitter / instagram if you like!

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“All my friends are heathens, take it slow.”

Ronan Lynch & Adam Parrish - The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

Buy a print here

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A Raven Cycle Holiday Short (A Very Declan Christmas)

(A Very Declan Christmas)

I’ve done a holiday short for the last few years. Here’s another one from the Raven Cycle universe.

Christmas was complicated, because of the dreaming.

Christmas and dreaming already felt like natural bedfellows; the holiday was already like a recurring dream humanity agreed to share. The logic of it was pure dreamstuff: A stranger brought gifts, sometimes impossibly longed for gifts, sometimes impossibly undesirable ones. A living tree was taken from the field and put inside the house. Tokens were stuffed in socks, an enormous bird was wrestled into the oven. Cranberry sauce was not a particularly realistic food. Like a recurring dream, Christmas came every year whether or not you wanted it.

Declan Lynch would’ve liked Christmas quite a bit if not for the nights that led up to it.

There were four of the Lynches: Niall, the charistmatic father, Aurora, the dulcet bride, Declan, the eldest, and Ronan, the youngest but nonetheless natural heir to everything important Niall possessed. They all lived in a place called the Barns, a remote Virginia farm tucked deeply into the hillocks in the west of the state.

They were a family of secrets.

Declan Lynch was marvelous at secrets. His mother whispered to him, laughing a little as she did, to make the secrecy unfrightening: Your father has brought a secret home for us; don’t tell anyone or they might want one too. The secret would be a car, or a three-horned cow, or a painting that made him feel strange to look at it. Sometimes they would keep the secret, but more often his father would disappear on a business trip to sell it to someone in the market for secrets.

Will you help me clean up the bedroom? Aurora would tell Declan some mornings. We’ll make a game of it.

On mornings like this, his parents’ bedroom would be full of secrets. Thousands of tulips, or an ocean of dried insects, or hundreds of muddy footprints from an unseen beast, or dozens of frozen blocks of fragrant soap. His father would be lying in the midst of it, still covered with secrets, or sometimes in the shower, cleaning them off himself.

Declan always helped clean, but he didn’t make a game of it or laugh or sing as his mother did. He’d always been too serious for her.

Smile, little Declan, she’d say, and tousle his curly hair. There’s so much to smile about.

There was a lot to be worried about, too, though.

Ronan, for instance.

Ronan was everything all at once. He was irascible and adoring, eager and reticent, joyful and furious. Niall had said once there was a saying about Irish weather: if you don’t like it, wait a minute.

That was Ronan.

Ronan had his share of secrets, too; Declan always understood that this was why he was the favorite. His were grander and more explosive than Niall’s, harder to hide, more likely to end in disaster.

Declan worried a lot about them.

He would wake with flaming swords, acidic butterflies, snarling fly traps, tiny bouncing infernos. Luckily, Ronan’s secrets were far more rare than Niall’s. He would go for months without one, and then flare up when he was wound up, or around the full moon. Or around Christmas.

It had taken him several years to understand that it wasn’t Christmas that made the dreaming worse; it was the Winter Solstice. Longest night of the year. Ronan slept the same amount around the solstice as he did any other time, so Declan wasn’t sure what was different about it. He just knew it was coming.  

Each year, Aurora helped the boys construct a new advent calendar, helping them to count down the days until Christmas.

Smile, Declan, she’d say, You’re so serious. Look how few days until Christmas, when your father returns.

Declan would look at the number of days until Ronan’s bad nights, and he would not smile. By the time Christmas hit, Declan’s eyes were bagged and sleepless.

What do you want for Christmas this year? Aurora asked.

No more secrets, Declan thought.

The first bad night that year was the nineteenth of December. Behind the advent calendar door had been a tiny wooden wren ornament with a golden ribbon. Declan had hung it on the tree too high for Ronan to reach and Ronan had thrown an absolute shit fest over it.

Boys, Aurora said. There will be another ornament tomorrow, and Ronan can hang that one. Go play together.

They did not go play together. Ronan wanted to, but Declan was sick of his face. He’d been watching his brother all night long for three days already, scrutinizing his sleeping face for evidence of oncoming disaster.

That night, when Ronan began to whimper in his sleep, Declan looked up from his post by Ronan’s bedroom door and threw a koosh ball at him. Ronan groaned and rolled over.

Declan had to wake him twice more that night, but there were no secrets.

The day after that was unseasonably warm, and the boys went outside to kick a ball around the cow fields. There was the unexpected gift of one thousand starlings, who had settled in the dun-colored grass on their way elsewhere. The birds shouted and squawked busily, moving in concert when startled. The game of kick ball quickly became a game of seeing how close the two Lynch brothers could creep to the flock.

I’d like a bird army, Ronan said.

Declan thought of how plausible such a request was for a person like his younger brother, and, thinking of what Ronan’s room would like in the morning after such a manifestation, said, I don’t think that would be very interesting.

You’re never into anything. You’re the most boring person I know. Ronan leapt to his feet. He ran into the flock of birds with such speed that their shock took a few seconds to catch up. Then he was in the midst of them, surrounded completely by birds scouring the air with their wings, birds and brother indistinguishable.

That night, when Ronan began to shift in his sleep, Declan woke him a little more roughly than was needed. The fourth time, he jerked the duvet off his brother, making no attempt to hide himself.

MOM!

Niall returned on the Solstice. It was a properly chilly day; no snow, but the ruddy grass was all turned white with frost and the trees were muted gray and the distant mountains beyond the trees were icy blue. Niall had them unload the trunk of his car, which was full of tantalizingly odd-shaped gifts. Secrets, some of them, Declan was sure, which were fine, but what he really wanted was a microscope set. None of the boxes were the correct size for that, which put him in a cross mood. Ronan’s euphoric mood — Ronan was always ecstatic when Niall returned — made him even crosser. He watched his brother on Niall’s shoulders as they played Giants around the barns, and he watched his mother and Ronan roll out sugar cookies, and he watched Niall set Ronan on the roof of his car for a better view as he flew one of his secrets high up into the sky for Ronan to watch.

Declan, come in and play with us, Aurora said that evening after they’d returned from Mass. She’d set up Chinese checkers by the fire. Ronan was already installed by the fire, laying on his stomach and looking through a peculiar book his father had brought home; it made Declan’s stomach twist to look at it, and after a moment, he realized that it had no pages — it had merely the impression of pages. The story hummed out of the book without words. Ronan was reading it without any apparent discomfort, and why would he have any? He was the same kind of impossible as Niall.

Aurora reached a hand toward Declan. Look, you can have one of your presents early.

It was a bag of new pieces for the game, ten intensely black-purple marbles. They shimmered like a raven’s eyes. They were so entirely to Declan’s liking that he went to his room and cried instead.

Let him go, Niall said, sure and he looks like he’s been up for a month.

When he woke, it was well into the night. Solstice night.

In the other room, Ronan was sleeping. Dreaming. Declan began to shift to get out of bed to begin his watch, but then he thought about all the bad feeling inside himself, and he didn’t. He rolled onto his back and warred with himself. Ronan might wake with something dangerous; Ronan deserved it. Ronan might get hurt; Ronan deserved it. Ronan might spend Christmas with one eye; Ronan might appreciate what Declan did for him then.

Through the wall, Declan could hear Ronan whimpering.

Declan was tired of managing secrets. There was nothing brilliant about dreaming for the one left awake.

Declan put his pillow on his head.

In the middle of the night, he woke.

He didn’t know at first why he had woken, because the world seemed dark and strange — a moment later, he realized he still had his pillow over his head, twisted round with the comforter for an airless, soundless nest.

When he removed it, he heard a squalling howl. For a cold, pulseless moment, he thought it might be Ronan. Then it came again, and he thought that it couldn’t be. There was something quite primal about it.

Guilt shoved him out of bed and send him into the hall and through Ronan’s door.

The squall came again as he entered the door, and fear chittered through him. He hated the secrets. He hated them. He hated being afraid.

He smashed the light on.

There was Ronan.

His younger brother was stretched out on the bed. He looked incorrect. Badly assembled. This was because he was paralyzed, which Declan knew from rueful experience meant he had brought a secret from his dream. His light blue eyes stared at nothing. His mouth was parted in pain, and his arms were covered in scratchmarks that hadn’t been there when Declan had last seen him on the hearth. The book Niall had brought him laid open within hand’s reach.

Declan didn’t know if Ronan could hear or see when he was like this, but he bent in front of him and said, you messed up, Ronan!

The squall came again. This time it was obvious that the source wasn’t in Ronan’s room. This was a curious facet of the secrets; sometimes Declan found them right next to Ronan — but not always. Sometimes he found them elsewhere in the house. And sometimes he never found them. He would just know that a paralyzed Ronan had manifested something somewhere and hope that it was nothing that would ruin the secret. Declan was terrified that Ronan would manifest a monster in his room one solstice.

The cry came again, and Declan left his frozen brother behind to step into the hall.

He found Aurora there, golden hair disheveled, wrapped in the silken blue robe Niall had brought her.

In her arms was a child. A baby. His hair was as golden as Aurora’s and as curled as Declan’s. Aurora was smiling at him, and the baby was already smiling back, comforted in Aurora’s arms. He cooed.

Declan said, Ronan—

Smile, little Declan. Aurora tousled Declan’s hair. Don’t tell anyone about this secret.

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Will you switch to pillowfort do you think? I LOVE your stuff and I’m afraid of losing all the amazing stuff you’ve made!

idk!! i definitely don’t wanna leave you guys, im quite sad about it all tbh. tumblr & the fandom community on tumblr has been here for me for so many years when i was really lonely and sad and it’s been an amazing space for me, so it’s sad to see it falling apart bc of some stupid “community guidelines”. the fact that anyone even likes my art at all is amazing and the fact that you guys wanna keep seeing it is honesty the kindest thing ever. i’m kind of in denial about everything right now even though I know the changes tumblr are making are imminent. it’s just sad to watch a community that has truly become home to be fall apart so quickly all because of fckin dumb internet censorship. I will definitely be joining some other platform to post my art (nsfw stuff especially, but I guess everything, if everyone’s leaving here). i’ve heard of a few different options already. I will look into this pillowfort thing, I honestly hate twitter and its shitty layout so that wouldn’t be ideal for me. but I will make sure my art is still accessible to you guys no matter what it takes!!