#chapter 30 tdt

[juliasgoodusername]

Sometimes a girl has to go a little crazy. Sometimes a girl has to make a book-accurate floorplan for 300 Fox Way. These things just happen, sometimes.

Obsessive annotations under the cut ✨ but be warned, there's a LOT

Exterior

Okay first of all, I'm no architect, and my only knowledge comes from work experience in the real estate industry + a lot of Sims. The style is sort of neo-rural French colonial. I didn't set out to adhere to that standard so much as I made an amalgamation of homes in Blue Ridge Mountains-adjacent towns in Virginia. Specifically, my headcanon Henrietta template is Orange, VA (I'll save that explanation for another post) so I took inspiration from real estate listings from there.

Alright alright I know there is supposed to be one bathroom, but I simply can't tolerate that in a house with 6+ residents. I can't. There was a possible contradiction in the descriptions of "the single shared bathroom" that I used as an excuse to add a 3/4 bath, and I threw in a powder room for free. Because technically there is still only one full bathroom! But seriously with that many women over 30 most of them probably have IBS or chronic constipation and I'm not making them all share a toilet.

Officially we only have 4 bedrooms listed in text: Blue's, Persephone's, Maura's, and Calla and Jimi's shared one. Everyone else gets rooms that don't qualify as bedrooms via Virginia residential building codes (such as the attic, obviously, which falls below the combined ceiling height and square footage requirements). That really just leaves Orla unaccounted for but I'll get to that later. Other aunts and friends seem to visit during the day and live somewhere else, because in The Raven King only Jimi and Orla were described as needing to move out of the house during the demon stuff.

I designed the entire interior floorplan before I even touched the exterior, so there's a few issues, like how I'm totally missing shutters on the windows that functionally need them most. 🫶 I didn't feel like making the windows smaller to fit them, and I could have added faux-shutters but I think those are stupid. 😘

First floor

"This house is lovely. So many walls. So, so many walls," Malory said as Blue entered the living room a little later.

- Blue Lily, Lily Blue, Chapter 30

Right off the bat, we have an insane number of doors and walls. Old colonial houses are pretty much the opposite of open concept. Functionally I believe that's because it's easier to control heat with closed off rooms, but Virginia is not particularly cold so idk. As for the number of doors, I mean....😤😤😤 I prefer archways/doorless frames in small high-traffic spaces, but every time I thought I could get away with it Maggie would specifically describe doors opening and closing (For example BL,LB Ch 41 gives the reading room double doors, and even the living room gets one in Ch 11. What kind of living room needs a door???). I'm actually missing one of the doorways described in canon, but if you know which one I'm talking about I DARE you to find a place to put that thing!! But I digress.

“Mom," she said as she jumped down the crooked stairs.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 3

I'm liberally using "crooked" to establish the corner turn stairs. Blue steadies herself on the stair railing when she identifies Gansey for the first time (TRB Ch 15), so I wanted the stairs to have good visual access to visitors. It also sort of has a feng shui-ish effect of separating the public and private energy zones in the house. If that statement made zero sense, I think one of us doesn't know enough about feng shui 👀 and it might be me.

I'm also using that quote to establish Maura's room downstairs, if Blue generally expects to find her mother there, but mostly because everything else was upstairs and it was getting hard to fit. Granted, at one point Blue leads the boys "up the stairs to Maura's bedroom" (TDT Epilogue) but since they were just arriving at 300 Fox Way those stairs could easily be the outdoor ones. There's a handful of little things to support me here, such as Adam grabbing a scrying bowl from Maura's room to use in the reading room (BL,LB Ch 41) implying that her room was the closest place to find one. And speaking of Maura's room-

Calla was overwhelmed by how much shit Maura had in her room at 300 Fox Way, and she told Blue this.

... The mess was taking years from her life. ... Maura liked chaos.

... The psychic hotline rang in the room next door. Calla's concentration fluttered away.

- Blue Lily, Lily Blue, Prologue

Maura is my favorite hypocrite. She claims to detest clutter (TRB Ch 34) and yet her room is literally described as chaos. She probably treats her room like a college student and moves the furniture every time she gets bored/stressed. Thus, I gave her the most insane furniture configuration I could think of while still matching all the contents described.

The phone ringing next door might imply that she neighbors the phone/sewing/cat room, but that area is pretty well described and Maura's room is never mentioned there in any other instance. That leaves us with the kitchen phone (TRB Ch 27) which I put in the hallway with kitchen access as a compromise so it would technically still be in a room next to Maura's.

In the reading room, the man looked around with clinical interest. His gaze passed over the candles, the potted plants, the incense burners, the elaborate dining room chandelier, the rustic table that dominated the room, the lace curtains, and finally landed on a framed photograph of Steve Martin.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 13

There are so many quotes about the reading room that I just don't feel like citing them, but other details include the mismatched chairs, the shelves, doors etc. It's also described specifically as Maura's "front room" (TRB Prologue) so it's one of the cornerstones that I designed the rest of the layout around. Because of the plants, it makes sense that this room would be south-facing too. (Although idk how much light they get with the wraparound porch awning in the way. Oops lol!)

The outside suddenly seemed vivid in comparison to the dim kitchen. The April-bright trees pressed against the windows of the breakfast area, ...

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 3

Blue Stormed into 300 Fox Way's kitchen and began a one-sided interrogation with Artemus, who was still hidden behind the closed storage closet door.

- The Raven King, Chapter 9

Likewise, I'm using the particularly dim kitchen to place it on the north side, where we also know there's trees in the backyard.

I'll say the kitchen layout is weirder than it strictly needed to be because in the Virginia homes I referenced I adored all the strange kitchens, especially with old timey 'servants area' vibes where laundry kitchen and pantry are all connected. Instead of a kitchen island, they get one of those rolling kitchen carts which I doubled as a bar cart for the drinks they have in the living room.

The kitchen has a doorway to the hall (TRB Ch 13) and the living room is within view when Blue's on the kitchen phone (Ch 27).

Speaking of chapter 27, that's when we get the description "The morning light through the windows turned the drinks a brilliant, translucent yellow." So I put the living room on the east side of the house, where the rising sun would cast really strong light like that.

Second Floor

When she woke up, her normally morning-bright room had the breath-held dimness of afternoon. In the next room over, Orla was talking to either her boyfriend or to one of the psychic hotline callers.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 3

Blue headed toward the red-painted door at the end of the hall. On her way, she had to pass the frenzy of activity in the Phone/Sewing/Cat Room and the furious battle for the bathroom. The room behind the red door belonged to Persephone, ...

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 11

Blue's room and the Phone/Sewing/Cat room are our cornerstones for this floor. In several examples we know that the Phone/Sewing/Cat room faces the street and has a window (TRB Ch 15, BL,LB Ch 4). While Blue's room is "morning-bright," we also get descriptions of guests at the front door "backlit by the evening sun," (TRB Ch 15) so once again we're probably talking about south windows if it's sunlit at both times of day.

Adam sat awkwardly on the edge of Blue's bed. It felt strange to have so easily gained access to a girl's bed- room. If you knew Blue at all, the room was unsurprising - canvas silhouettes of trees stuck to the walls, leaves hanging in chains from the ceiling fan, a bird with a talk bubble reading WORMS FOR ALL painted above a shelf cluttered with buttons and about nine different pairs of scissors. Against the wall, Blue self-consciously taped up the drooping branch on one of the trees.

- The Dream Thieves, Chapter 49

We get some great descriptions of Blue's room (especially TRB Ch 43), although the above one is my favorite (#wormsforall). Every piece of furniture is accounted for exactly as described except the desk which I added because it seemed practical, and Blue is nothing if not practical™.

Persephone's room is also very well-described, all the way down to the furniture and lighting placement (BL,LB Ch 4 and TRB Ch 11) and it's surprisingly similar to Blue's room, if not a bit smaller. Her room gets strong afternoon sunlight, so I put it on the south too (BL,LB Ch 43).

Calla and Jimi share a room that's also upstairs (TRK Ch 16). Because they are the only two who have to share a room, I have justified that it must be the "master bedroom" (sorry for using that term) and is far bigger than the other bedrooms. I managed to fit two queen beds in there, but some scholars [me] would argue that Jimi and Calla might also share a bed because they are in love. Can you prove me wrong? No, you can't.

As for the bathroom, remember when I mentioned a possible contradiction? Famously, Maura draws the ley line symbol in the steamed up shower door (TRB Ch 1). However, much later we get Maura, Orla, Calla and Jimi all sitting in the bathtub for some kind of ritual (TRK Ch 9). No matter how I picture it, I can't put 4 full grown women in a bathtub together without someone partially sitting on/spilling over the side. But that would be impossible in a combo bath/shower enclosed by glass doors!! Thus, I gave The Bathroom a nice tub and put a small shower in the en suite of Jimi and Calla's room. I know this is a stretch but I don't really care.

Attic

Blue had never been a big fan of the attic, even before Neeve moved in. Numerous slanting roof lines provided dozens of opportunities to hit your head on a sloping ceiling. Unfinished wood floorboards and areas patched with prickly plywood were unfriendly to bare feet. Summer turned the attic into an inferno.

... In one of the narrow dormers, two full-length, footed mirrors faced each other, reflecting mirrored images back and forth at each other in perpetuum.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 34

Trying to fit the attic access in after everything in the second floor was my biggest challenge, because stairs normally take up a lot of space and you have to be careful about head room. I'm the end, I decided it was one of those fold out attic doors that you have to reach from the ceiling of the hallway. We might get a lot of instances of the attic door being opened (😤 seriously, Maggie... 😤) but technically a trap door in the ceiling is still a door!

Dormers pretty much cemented the French colonial style for me. And you know the drill by now: a hot room probably means a lot of sun, which means I give it a south facing window!

Mud Room/Cellar/Basement

This cellar has absolutely zero mention in the text, but my justification is based in the architecture. So far we've got a funky old colonial house, built without a garage, lots of walls etc. Especially in a low-income/semi-rural area, it's not crazy to assume that 300 Fox Way was built before most residents had refrigerators (1930s-40s). Besides iceboxes, a major way to keep food fresh was root cellars. Modern renovations for old homes convert these to concrete basements, but that's why the basement is so small and connects to the kitchen.

My headcanon is that Orla originally shared a room. Pick whoever you want: Maura, Blue or Persephone, any of them would easily be such a chaotic roommate that Orla snapped and in a fit of teen girl rage moved herself down to the crummy dark basement. Over time, she made efforts to glamorize it, such as a vintage dressing screen to hide the flood drainage pump. The privacy also allows her to bring boyfriends over, even sneaking them through the mud room.

This is really just my artistic license, but I swear it makes a surprising amount of sense in context. There's cases of Orla sneaking into the kitchen (easier if she has a back entrance) and she's almost always using the phone upstairs or in the kitchen (because a basement would get bad reception) even though her calls get kinda ~intimate.

Aaaaaand I think that's everything. Sorry it doesn't look like the photo from the wiki at all, but I couldn't find a source for it and Victorian style wasn't super common in the areas I researched. Let me know if I missed anything major! I'll probably cry myself to sleep if so.

[stroobae]

Okay so basically I got to do a presentation about chapter 30 from The Dream Thieves in my Creative Writing class and I got way to carried away writing a full analysis so I thought I'd post it here

I think this passage is so great because it's packed with symbols that completely encapsulate the character of Ronan Lynch. Firstly, we have Ronan’s tattoo, which holds a lot of significance in terms of its literal purpose and what it figuratively represents. We learn here that the literal purpose of the tattoo is to instill fear and intimidation among others. Ronan is a very damaged person, and uses his physical appearance as a warning sign for others to steer clear of him after his father dies. He has a shaved head, a permanent scowl, and most intimidating of all: a tattoo which stretches from the back of his neck all the way down to his waist. His tattoo has a lot of grotesque, frightening imagery in it, which is interesting considering its design is made up of “things from his head.” The fact that the dark imagery portrayed in his tattoo is from his head reveals the struggles and dark things that come out of his own mind. His tattoo is a literal manifestation of Ronan’s inner self portrayed in a scene on his back. He’s quite literally wearing his heart on his sleeve (or on his back rather). It’s also mentioned that Ronan has never been able to see the tattoo fully, because it’s on his back. It can only be seen by others standing behind him, and also, when he’s naked (which is something I’ll come back to later). I think that the placement of his tattoo specifically is a really important metaphor alongside the idea that Ronan’s tattoo represents his whole character and inner self. The fact that Ronan cannot see the whole picture of himself and only “bits and pieces” seems like a large indicator that Ronan doesn’t know fully who he is. In the prologue of The Dream Thieves, it’s stated that Ronan has three secrets, all of different natures; the nature of the second secret being one you keep even from yourself. So essentially, Ronan has a part of himself which he doesn't even truly understand, and I think that this is really accentuated by the fact that he can't see his whole tattoo (his inner self) because it's always behind him. However, others also can’t see the whole tattoo unless he takes his shirt off to show them. (BIG THING FOR LATER!)

In the epilogue of TDT you find out (along with Ronan himself) that he’s in love with one of his best friends, Adam. During this chapter, the reader hasn’t been told yet that Ronan is in love with Adam; mostly because the book follows his point of view, and he doesn’t actually know this about himself yet either. It’s made into a plot twist of sorts in the epilogue, and many readers said that they weren’t aware that it was coming at all. A lot of people felt that Ronan’s crush on Adam came out of nowhere. But if you’re me and love to look WAY too deep into every single line of a book, you’ll know that this isn’t the case at all. This dream is a dead giveaway of Ronan’s feelings. First of all, dreams–especially the way that they’re portrayed in this book–are a look into one’s inner conscience. Your dreams are able to display your deepest feelings and desires, even if you’re not consciously aware of them in real life. Ronan especially is a character who has walls built up, and doesn't verbally communicate how he feels to any other character. He doesn’t even allow himself to examine his own feelings/desires, and has a lack of self-vulnerability and personal emotional intelligence. So in his dreams, his most inner part of himself comes to the forefront of his mind and shows him things he didn’t even know he wanted. To validate this idea, we have the fact that Ronan can fully see his whole tattoo in this dream. His tattoo represents his inner self, and he is finally able to see this part of himself within his dream. The dream begins with Dream Adam tracing his tattoo, and in Latin (which I’ll unpack later) he says,“Scio quid hoc est” which roughly translates to “I know what this is.” Once again, returning to the idea that Ronan’s tattoo is a manifestation of himself, we have Adam physically touching it and telling Ronan he knows what the tattoo means. He understands its whole purpose; why Ronan got it, what it’s really depicting. Dream Adam isn’t intimidated by the tattoo like most people because of its gruesome imagery, but instead he knows that it’s really made up of things from Ronan’s conscience, that it’s a representation of who he is inside. What’s really being portrayed in this scene is Ronan’s desire to be truly known by someone, which is a common theme in the series. The fact that the person shown “knowing” Ronan in his dream is Adam specifically is really important as well. Up until this point, we know that Adam and Ronan are friends, their relationship is shown to be tense and is characterized by squabbles which are resolved by the end of the day. We don’t really know exactly how they feel about each other yet based on their surface level interactions. Therefore, this chapter is extremely important in developing their relationship. We now know partly about how Ronan truly feels about Adam. Not necessarily what their relationship currently is, but what he subconsciously wants it to be. Ronan wants to be known by Adam and believes that he has this capability, since it’s Adam who fills this role in his dream. 

In the dream, Dream Adam then transforms into Kavinsky, who’s the antagonist in this installment. Kavinsky is an adrenaline junky who’s presented to have an infatuation with Ronan. He gets him to do crazy things: dangerously drag race in the streets, take questionable dreamt-pills, and throw molotov cocktails at white Mitsubishis. He’s infatuated with Ronan mainly because of Ronan’s outward reputation and appearance, his mutual love for perilous activities, and the fact that they share the supernatural ability to take things out of their dreams. Kavinsky wants someone to enable him; who he can be an enabler to. Kavinsky thinks that they’re one in the same, and that Ronan is an exemplary candidate for a self-destructive partner. In Ronan’s dream, when Adam turns into Kavinsky, Ronan disappears entirely. He becomes only his tattoo, which gets smaller and smaller until it's simply a tiny Celtic knot. The notion that Ronan disappears and that his tattoo (all that’s left of him, a manifestation of his conscience) gets smaller when Kavinsky appears, shows that he literally feels small when he’s with him. Kavinsky belittles Ronan. He misunderstands who he is, and boils him down to his wildness and rash spontaneousness. He quite literally swallows Ronan whole in the dream; he destroys all that he is. Dream Kavinsky tells Ronan in Latin, “Scio quid estis vos'', which roughly translates to “I know what you are.” WOOOOOF. OH, IT'S SO GOOD. I GOT CHILLS. This could have SO many meanings. “I know what you are” could mean that Kavinsky knows that Ronan is a dreamer, just like himself, or it could also mean that he knows Ronan is gay (if we’re revisiting that idea of this dream bringing to the forefront parts of Ronan that he doesn’t know about himself yet). Adam and Kavinsky are complete opposites in Ronan’s dream, and furthermore, his life. The dream versions of the two represent what he wants, versus what he’s settled with. Currently, Ronan doesn’t think that he’s worthy of someone who truly knows and loves him. Instead, he’s resigned himself to a homoerotic unlabeled relationship with Kavinsky—who doesn't actually care about who he is, and only wants someone who he can destroy his life with. The exact phrasing of the things Dream Adam and Kavinsky separately say to Ronan are SO significant. Essentially they’re telling him the same thing: what they think they know about him. It's the words which they use to say this which makes these statements wildly different. Dream Adam says “I know what this is” about Ronan’s tattoo, meaning that he knows Ronan’s inner self. He knows this thing which he can’t normally see all of himself display of terrible things from his own mind. Dream Kavinsky says “I know what you are” which displays his assumption of Ronan’s outer character.  It’s a bold assumption and an incorrect one. The difference between Adam and Kavinsky to Ronan, is that Ronan wants Adam because he’s different from himself, and doesn’t want Kavinsky because he’s too similar to him. To an extent, I think Ronan fears Kavinsky because he’s who Ronan would be if he didn’t have Gansey or Adam in his life to keep him sane. Initially, Ronan does like to have someone to let off steam with, but he eventually realizes doesn't want an enabler to ruin his life with. He wants someone like Adam–his polar opposite–to know him, to ground him. He wants to feel alive, and awake. 

Another interesting element to this chapter is that Ronan’s dream seems to be erotic in nature; it’s a wet-dream. This is a little jarring for a YA novel, but I personally think eroticsm and sex used in literature as metaphors for conveying relationships and character vulnerability is really beautiful and clever. The significance of it being a sex dream is the fact that Ronan, as previously stated, isn’t someone who verbalizes his love for people. He shows it through physical intimacy and acts of service. Intercourse is literally as close as one can be with another person, and Ronan is completely vulnerable and laid bare in this moment. In it Ronan is naked, which we know because the dream begins with Adam tracing the tattoo all the way down his bare back. Remember, Ronan’s tattoo can only be seen fully when he’s naked, which adds another layer to this. Here it’s assumed that he had allowed Dream Adam to see his tattoo, because he had to have taken off his shirt to see it. Circling back Ronan’s tattoo placement, it’s something that not only can’t be fully seen by himself, but also can’t be fully seen by others unless he decides to strip naked for them. Here he allows Adam to see it and even trace the lines of it down his back. He felt comfortable enough to be vulnerable with Adam like that, and to inspect his whole being. The fact that Kavinsky then appears and the tattoo becomes smaller represents Ronan's uncomfortability with Kavinsky. He didn’t mean for him to see that part of himself and shrinks away in shame until Kavinsky devours the tattoo without permission. It really enforces the idea that Ronan wants and chooses Adam, but Kavinsky forces himself into his life and takes from Ronan without asking. Finally, Ronan awakes from his wet dream “euphoric and ashamed.” This could either be about the fact that it was a sex dream with not one, but other boys, or the confrontation of his true desires. He’s ashamed to admit what he really wants, and doesn’t allow himself to fully comprehend what this dream means. Ronan even thinks that he never wants to sleep again, which really means that he doesn't want his dreams to confront him with his true feelings again. This can tie into the metaphor about Ronan’s sexuality in terms of the fact that he got off to Adam and then Kavinsky, or that he doesn’t want to let his guard down and admit what he truly wants. 

It’s now finally time to unpack the use of Latin! Hooray! Throughout the series, we’re shown that Ronan is really flippant about school. He’s constantly on the brink of expulsion from Aglionby because he doesn’t go to any of his classes or do any of the work. However, the one class he has consistent attendance in as well as the highest overall grade is Latin—second to his proficiency in the language is Adam. They’re both in the same class, and are said to be able to almost fully understand and speak perfect Latin. The use of this dead language is a common theme in the series, and almost all of Ronan’s dreams are in latin. There’s an underlying meaning in that alone. A fun tidbit if we’re looking into the meaning of latin phrases we have the imagery of “claws and beak” described about the imagery of Ronan’s tattoo. The latin phrase “Unguibus et rostro” translates to “claws and beak” and is an expression about fighting with everything you have for something you want. It’s idiomatically comparable to phrases like “heart and soul” and “with all one’s strength” (thanks to ravenclawsandbeak on tumblr for sharing this finding with the fans).  In the final book in the series, there’s a short chapter which is essentially a call-back to this chapter, and follows the format in which it’s written pretty clearly. However, Ronan is awake this time rather than dreaming. 

This chapter is more or less a sex scene between Ronan and Adam, and is essentially the exact opposite to Ronan’s wet dream in TDT. Here, Ronan’s desires are no longer a fantasy that came to him in a dream, he finally has exactly what he’s wanted all along. in which they admit their feelings for each other, which is done indirectly and not through words. The fact that it's through a sex scene is significant because it's showing their intimacy. Intercourse between people is literally as close as two people can get. As a couple, Adam and Ronan rarely verbalize their feelings about each other, and so this intimate act is really them letting down their walls and allowing themselves to be completely vulnerable to each other. Here, we have Adam studying Ronan's tattoo in real life this time, just like in his dream (Something he’s only able to do because Ronan allowed him). He sees all the fine details in its design, and interestingly enough, speaks aloud this latin phrase “Unguibus et rostro” (This also begins a common theme of Ronan and Adam speaking in cryptic latin phrases rather than just actually telling the other of how they feel about each other, but that's a story for another time). This, as everything else does, has multiple meanings; it shows that not only Adam correctly interprets the imagery on tattoo, showing that now he does truly know and understand Ronan’s inner self. But also it reiterates the meaning of this phrase: that Ronan has appropriately fought with all he had for what he wants. He was able to reject Kavinsky and stay true to himself and his principles, and he realized his feelings for Adam, and was able to let his guard down enough to reach out to Adam and let him know how he actually felt about him. And similarly, he allowed Adam to love him back. 

So why did Maggie Stiefvater include the chapter in TDT? It completely breaks the flow of the main story, interrupts two other character’s POVs, and comes seemingly out of nowhere. It's not described where Ronan is, who he came to sleep, when it’s happening. It feels as if the placement of this chapter didn’t matter; it could appear anywhere and still have the same effect. My theory? I think that Stiefvater specifically placed this chapter here because she thought it was an appropriate time to learn more about Ronan, and she wanted the chapter to stick out due to shock value. Because it’s at such a seemingly random moment, and its content is brief and strange, it’s a stark outlier from the rest of the chapters. For me, this strategy totally worked. When I think back to this book, this chapter is by far the most memorable one. I remember it almost immediately when I think about any specific line/chapter from this book. Even though the dream seems random and complex, it has so much meaning packed into it about Ronan’s inner conscience and character. Stiefvater wants to reveal all of these things about Ronan previously analyzed without directly telling us. 

[excelsiorss]

i’m about 30 chapters into Greywaren and you’re telling me that “With each of them it had felt right” Gansey and “I’m in love with all my friends” Blue are just? not around??? like planes are falling out of the sky because dreams are falling asleep and they’re on their road-trip or whatever the fuck they’re doing like “seems normal!”

i’m totally okay with them not being in tdt because it’s not their story, but i can’t imagine them not being worried about Ronan or them not at least calling ADAM to be like “we just saw the craziest thing on the news”

the only thing i can think is that they themselves were dreams and nobody’s thought to check in on them—that’s how crazy it is to me that there’s no mention of them.

edit, literally 5 minutes later:

i had to sit and think about why a writer would do this, and I realized that the tdt series wouldn’t have worked if gansey had been around bc he would have set ronan straight in the first half of cdth, probably right after getting a call from Adam about the dorm room situation

[shayberri789]

(Maybe?) Headcanon

Ronan lynch can draw. And do it well

[kittykatninja321]

Hennessy voice you not rocking with me ⁉️ I’ll kill myself

[selkielore]

TDT PLAYLIST // songs are in order based on events in the book. full tracklist and corresponding chapters under the cut.

PROLOGUE

In Dreams - Ben Howard 

CHAPTER 3:

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) - Eurythmics

CHAPTER 5:

400 Lux - Lorde

CHAPTER 6:

Troublemaker- Herizen

A Boy Is A Gun - Tyler, The Creator

CHAPTER 8:

Monsoon - Hippo Campus

Never Be Mine - Angel Olsen

17 - Perfume Genius 

CHAPTER 9:

Gods & Monsters by Lana Del Ray

Hurricane Drunk - Florence + The Machine

I Know - Fiona Apple

CHAPTER 12:

Me Liquor and God - Night Beds

Dreamer (Compound Version) - Charli XCX, Starrah, RAYE

CHAPTER 15:  i’m not where you are - Marika Hackman

CHAPTER 17: 

Shadow Boxing - Julien Baker

Die 4 You - Perfume Genius

CHAPTER 20: 

Jeff Davis County Blues - The Mountain Goats

CHAPTER 24: 

SUMMER - Brockhampton

CHAPTER 27

Devil I know - Allie X

Drugs - Charli XCX, ABRA

All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands - Sufjan Stevens 

CHAPTER 30:

I’m On Fire (Bruce Springsteen cover) - Soccer Mommy 

CHAPTER 33: 

Graceless - The National 

Super Duper Party People - Allie X

CHAPTER 34: 

Ride - Lana Del Ray

Vroom Vroom - Charli XCX

I Love It (ft. Charli XCX) - Icona Pop

CHAPTER 35:

Kill V. Maim - Grimes

Road Head - Japanese Breakfast

CHAPTER 36: 

Beekeeper - Keaton Henson

Round We Go - Marika Hackman

Chapter 42: 

Mistaken For Strangers by The National 

CHAPTERS 43 & 44

Under The Moon - 070 Shake 

You Don’t Get Me High Anymore - Phantogram 

I Am A God - Kanye West 

CHAPTER 49

Bite The Hand - Boygenius 

Never Heal Myself - Cults 

CHAPTER 50: 

Unfucktheworld - Angel Olsen

Chapter 61: 

Hell, Yeah - Nothing But Thieves

Fruit - ABRA

I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE - Tyler, The Creator 

i don’t want to die... - Kim Petras

EPILOGUE: 

Meet Me in the Woods - Lord Huron

Say It - Maggie Rodgers 

[rughydrangea]

Thoughts on Call Down the Hawk? Theories?

Oof. So I... did not finish it. I had a library copy in my possession for about 3ish weeks, and then I left New England for California, still on chapter 36. I should say right off the bat that this is not fully a dig on the book--in the time I had it in my possession, I was frantically compiling a chapter draft/outline, watching as many movies as I could, cooking many various holiday meals, reading Bleak House to my mother (we’re 30% of the way through! we will finish it in 5 years!), and generally trying to spend as much time as possible with my parents, whom I love very much and whom I typically live very far away from. So it’s not that pure lack of interest stopped me from finishing. But a divergence between my own interests and what the book is interested in did. Let me explain.

I have actually read most of this book! I skipped through a lot of it, a habit from my high school days that I rarely revive, but that I did in this case as I was making my way through it and realizing that there was not a ton of Adam. So I skipped through it once, to catalogue all of the Adam appearances. They were far too few! I am sure there will be more of him in the second book, and I’m equally sure that Maggie has her own plot reasons for why he was so absent, but as with the lack of Ronan in BLLB, the fact that you have an explanation does not mean that the resultant book is better for the decision that you made. Adam is my favorite TRC character, as I feel I have made abundantly clear over the last 5 years, and I think having a book where he is at the periphery is a mistake. But that leads into my second point, which is:

I do not care about this plot. In much the same way that I never cared about Glendower, really. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Maggie’s best book is TDT, where the plot and Ronan’s emotional arc are one and the same. I think she’s great at characterization and much weaker at pure plot mechanics, and when I’m in a situation where I’m reading something for fun, I don’t want to read things I don’t care about. I don’t care about Niall and all his random dreams running around, I don’t care about fairy markets, I REALLY don’t care about an international collective out to kill dreamers, and that’s kind of... the book. So once I knew what was going to happen, there was nothing propelling me to discover the mechanics of HOW or WHY, so I just kind of stopped.

This is not to say that I hated what I read, by any means. I thought the Adam stuff we did get was great (I get why it’s a Ronan trilogy, but honestly if it were up to me (it’s probably a good thing that it isn’t), I’d scrap the magic and just have an Adam-goes-to-college trilogy. That is where my personal interest lies), I thought a lot of the Ronan and Ronan/Declan dynamic was rewarding, I genuinely liked Hennessy and Jordan (my second skip-through was for them), but the problem is that these are good characters hovering around a plot, and a world, that do not interest me in the slightest. The whole fairy market malarky veered very close to urban fantasy, a genre I genuinely dislike, I didn’t find a single thing to hook me in Carmen and her weird German psychic ward, and, as with a lot of TRK, I could not for the life of me get why I had to sit through all this plot that felt secondary to what I really love, which is Adam and Ronan. Also I nearly threw the book across the room when I got to ‘or was the Grey Man just a gun in Greenmantle’s hand?’

All of this might sound really negative, but I must stress that I am exhausted and have half a bottle of wine in me. I will finish this book at some point! I will certainly read the whole trilogy. I reread that one chapter where Ronan goes to Harvard and sees Adam’s lies a gazillion times, because it reminded me that when those two are good, there is nothing quite like them. It is not the book’s fault that what it wants to be and what I want it to be are two different things. 

But even when I do finish it, I don’t think I will have any theories, except that Adam and that guy he had to meet in Thayer (I once had a study session for a Russian exam there! And I spent my pre-frosh weekend there! It is certainly a better name for a dorm than Wigglesworth, which is where I actually lived!) will end up having some kind of plotty significance, which will almost certainly leave me cold. I’m sorry, this is far too long. Once again, I blame it on the wine.

[sophygurl]

300 Fox Way - let’s unpack the household a bit

One thing I want to take a closer look at regarding 300 Fox Way in The Raven Cycle is what the composition of the household actually is, and what their history and relationship dynamics are because it’s not all that clear. And I just love them all so much, and love the idea of the house and household so much, so I just wanna know everything we can possibly know about them!

Here are some things we know, or can assume or guess, about the makeup and personal dynamics of 300 Fox Way:

Maura, Calla, and Persephone came together from separate points and formed the 300 Fox Way household when they were fairly young (or at least when Maura and Calla were young - Persephone’s age, like everything else about her, is pretty vague and there are hints that no one really knows how old she is which makes me think she might be older than the rest)

At some point in time Jimi joined the household, and was either already with Orla then, or Orla was born there, or possibly Orla at some point lived elsewhere and joined her mom and the others later in life. All we know for sure is that Orla had been there are least since her teen years as per BLLB chapter 30: “Orla had gone through a period in her teens of telling everyone what their auras said about them. She had told Blue that her aura had meant she was short. She had been a pretty awful teenager.”

Also, Orla is at least 21 years old, as that’s the reason given for Gansey asking her along on the boat trip. I’m guessing she can’t be much older than that since she is continuously flirting with teenage boys and this isn’t seen as particularly creepy, and she also still has a pulse on the high school social scene. 

Side note: in BLLB chapter 13, Blue says that Orla “was still friends or ex-girlfriends with her entire class” - paying attention to word choice here, it doesn’t say friends or ex-friends, nor friends or ex’s. Is Orla bi? Did she date girls in high school? Food for thought. 

Blue was born into the household, and we get the sense that all of the above mentioned women were around since she was a small child and helped in the raising of her. I would guess the same would be true of Orla, and that these two were raised more or less as siblings, hence their sibling-like rivalry with one another. What cracks me up is the sibling-like relationship Maura and Orla seem to have! Maura is often snotty towards Orla, which may or may not be due in part to her motherly protectiveness of Blue. But it also seems their personalities clash a bit - Maura liking to be in charge and Orla liking to go rogue. 

Neeve comes to stay with them at the start of The Raven Boys, and after she’s gone and they find Gwenllian she joins the household.

Artemus is the only male we ever hear about living at Fox Way

Although The Gray Man does seem to stay overnight sometimes

It also seems that Orla often entertains men

There are possibly other women who live at Fox Way, or who have at one point in time lived there, or who stay there sometimes, or who just come and go a lot during the day.

These possible people are maybe related to Maura and Jimi, or maybe to others of the household, or maybe are just referred to as family due to emotional closeness.

Jimi is Maura’s sister - most likely full sister as Blue makes a point of referring to Neeve always as a half-aunt and Jimi as just an aunt

Blue also never refers to Calla or Persephone as aunts in the way you might call a close family friend an aunt, so I think Blue is very precise about what she calls her family members. So Jimi is a full aunt, Neeve is a half-aunt, Orla is a cousin, and there may or may not be other aunts and half-aunts and cousins around. 

The reason I say maybe about other family members/household members is that while Blue is precise about what she calls her family members, she also definitely does exaggerate when it comes to counting the people who live in or hang out in her house. Hence, it’s difficult to tell exactly who all might live there or be there a lot.

Some of the things Blue says about the makeup of her family/household:

TRB chapter 1: “In Blue’s intensely clairvoyant family, she was a fluke, an outsider to the vibrant conversation her mother and aunts and cousins held with a world hidden to most people.” - this seems to imply that she has multiple cousins, in addition to multiple aunts, although Orla is the only cousin she ever names.

TRB chapter 3: “There was school for Blue and work for some of the more productive (or less intuitive) aunts...” - again the implication of multiple aunts, unless Blue is referring to all of the adult women in the house as aunts in this instance.

Side note about jobs in the household: We know that Calla has a job outside the house working some kind of office job at Aglionby Academy. Orla seems to be in charge of the psychic hotline she put in, Neeve had her books and TV show, Persephone had her PhD work, and Jimi apparently has a job that requires her to sometimes have a night shift but I don’t believe we’re told what that is. It’s not clear what, if anything, Maura might have done beyond the readings or if any of the other possible inhabitants of the house had outside jobs.

TRB chapter 19: “Inside, every room was occupied with cousins and aunts and mothers.” - an example of Blue presumably exaggerating the number of people in the house. 

Then again in chapter 20: “There are three hundred and forty-two people who live in this house and they all want to be in this room.” - A clear exaggeration this time lol 

In TRB chapter 22, Blue refers to Neeve as “one of” her half-aunts, and since she only ever refers to Jimi as an aunt, we’re meant to think she has other half-aunt’s out there too. This makes me wonder - from the same side of the family as Neeve or from the other parent? How many? 

TDT chapter 26: “She stepped over two small girls (she wasn’t certain who they belonged to) playing with tanks in the middle of the hall and snuck past a sort of possible second cousin carrying two lit candles.” - none of this is described as being out of the ordinary and implies a few things -

small girls can often be found playing in the house - relatives? relatives of other household members? friend’s kids? client’s kids? did the girls bring the tanks or does Fox Way keep tanks around for little girls who come over to play with?

a possible second cousin means there are, in fact, other relatives hanging about. Assuming it is a second cousin, that would be Maura’s cousin? On Neeve’s side or the other side? How many second cousins does she have? Blue is always so casual about all of this - just gobs of female relatives and family friends so she doesn’t even bother finding out exactly who they are or how she’s related to them like?! Come on - help me out here Blue!

BLLB chapter 17: “Plus, Trinity - Jimi’s sister or cousin or friend - had brought over about one thousand little cousins or something to make soap.” - Blue, being vague as always, also exaggerating again. But aha! Another named family member of some kind. 

If Trinity is possibly Jimi’s sister or cousin, but not Maura’s, would that make her a half-sister or half-cousin and my hypothesis that Jimi is Maura’s full sister is wrong? My guess is that Trinity is a close friend of Jimi’s who is like family the way Calla and Persephone are like family. But who knows! 

Gansey also says, in BLLB chapter 43, “He found Calla and Jimi and Orla and two other young women he didn’t recognize in the kitchen.” Again, the implication that there are multiple women who are a part or semi-part of this household who are not named/generally talked about. Relatives? Family friends? Neighbors? Clients?

We’re not sure about where any male relatives (other than Artemus eventually) might be, but Blue quips in TDT chapter 13 that “It’s like boot camp. They can’t hack it. Poor things.” Presumably none of the women of Fox Way who have had children have had sons, but what about the fathers or uncles or male cousins, etc,? Not even any close male friends (at least until the Gangsey enter Blue’s life)?

We’re also not sure what happened to Blue’s grandmothers, but in the same chapter as the above quote about the men in the family, Blue tells Gansey they both died and that her mom always said they’d died of meddling. This is clearly not a serious answer, so that leaves more questions.

300 Fox Way and things related to it are often referred to in terms of belonging to Maura or to “the Sargent’s” - this could be due to Blue’s own perspective, or perhaps because Maura is the unofficial head of the household, or because there are more Sargent’s than non-Sargent’s in the household (Maura and Blue for sure, and presumably Orla and Jimi share the same last name although this is never specified). Examples:

The car:

TRB chapter 6: “His watch looked as if it cost more than her mother’s car...” - not the family car, or the household car as it is sometimes described. Does Maura own the car and everyone gets to use it, or is this just a nice shorthand? 

TRB chapter 43 - Calla says that Neeve “scuttled the car” - this time it’s more generically referred to as just the car. 

TDT chapter 48 - “Calla removed the keys to the Fox Way car from her pocket.” - from Blue’s pov, it is now the Fox Way car and not her mother’s, but could this be because her mother is currently missing and/or because Calla was the one driving it at the time?

TDT chapter 54 - described as “the shared Fox Way vehicle.”

The house:

TDT chapter 6 “Sitting on the floor of her mother’s kitchen, Blue glared up at her older cousin.” - her mother’s kitchen might imply that Maura owns the house, or, as with the car example, might just show that Blue thinks of household things as belonging to her mom.

None of the women at Fox Way were born in town or on the corpse road - so they’re all imports to the community. We know Maura (so presumably Jimi and possibly Neeve although it seems she did not grow up with Neeve) hails from West Virginia, but I don’t think we get any clues about where the other ladies come from originally. Jimi and Orla go to stay with friends in WV towards the end of TRK, which is further implication that they’re from the same area as Maura, and likely Maura and Jimi grew up together as siblings. 

The Bedroom situation:

Persephone has her own room -

TRB chapter 11 “Persephone was a poor but energetic sleeper; her midnight shouting and nocturnal leg paddling ensure she never had to share a room.”

Blue has her own room - her room is described many times as only hers, never a mention that she shares it or has ever shared it with anyone. She has privacy there and autonomy to decorate it as she wishes. 

Maura has her own room

TDT chapter 57 “The Gray Man checked out of Pleasant Valley Bed and breakfast and placed his suitcase just inside the door of Maura’s bedroom.”

Also the prologue of BLLB has Blue and Calla going through the things in Maura’s room.

Orla - does she have her own room? If not, who does she share with?

Neeve, and then Gwenllian, lived in the attic by themselves. Artemus lived in the kitchen closet by himself (ha!).

Calla and Jimi share a room - this is at first posed as owing to there not being a lot of rooms in the house, but it seems as if everyone else has their own room. You’d think that if anyone was going to be forced to share, it would be the children - Orla and Blue. So why Calla and Jimi? Why doesn’t one of them live in the attic if it’s habitable? Couldn’t one of them taken over the phone/sewing/cat room? We know there is some story about Jimi having had once punched Calla. We know Jimi is normally very sweet and compassionate. We know that Calla is a fighter and generally a gruffer person. There are perhaps some hints that Calla is gay? So? Are Calla and Jimi lovers? WHY IS THIS NEVER TALKED ABOUT! I need this, Maggie!

Some other random tidbits:

From the Christmas short story, we see that they celebrate the holiday in their usual hodgepodge way of accommodating all of their various personality and cultural background differences. There is of course a lot of pagan-influenced stuff. From Persephone’s Estonian background we have the hay under the Christmas tree. There are lots of sort of traditional Christmas things such as lights around the windows outside and fruitcake. But there are also mentions of some Kwanzaa traditions such as the black, red, and green flag pointing east. This leads me to believe that all of the headcanons about at least one person in the household being black is not just a headcanon. I think there is enough evidence that Calla is black for this just to be canon at this point. I personally think of both Jimi and Orla as being described in ways that lead to them very plausibly being black, as well. Whether this makes Maura and Blue black as well depends somewhat on if you agree with my hypothesis that Jimi and Maura are full siblings. As a white lady, take anything I say on this matter with a hefty grain of salt, but I definitely read Calla as black and the Sargents as quite possibly not-white. Persephone, otoh, is pasty as shit. 

I’ve got a whole thing about the physical descriptions of the house to make at some point, as well as a Maura/Calla/Persephone friendship analysis, some fun Orla/Blue sibling meta, some Blue and her mom’s stuff, and there will be more about FW whenever I get around to making my “questions I still have/mysteries yet unsolved” post. Any requests?? 

[luckyladylily]

Hello! Could I ask for a progress update? TDT, Who I want to be, Mermaid Tracer etc.

Writing Progress

Sure, I have not given a progress update in a while, I have no problem with that.

Overall Writing

The past few months have not been great for my writing, I went through some pretty tough things and it really derailed my ability to write, and it has been difficult getting back into the habit now that I have recovered. I have been doing small writing practices to get myself back into the habit without the pressure of wanting to do really good work on one of my longer projects I find personally important, and this has helped me a lot to get back into the habit of writing. I am writing again almost every day, which feels great, and slowly chipping away at some of my longer standing projects.

Dragon’s Tribute

The next chapter is partially written, sitting at 4.5k at the moment with maybe 1k of that needing serious revision and another 2k or so before the chapter will be written out and ready for my normal editing process. This next chapter is taking a while because of several reasons.

I actually had an entire next chapter written at 2.5k that was a direct continuation of current events, but then I scrapped it because I decided I was not happy with a few things about it at a fundamental level. It was not bad stuff, but I decided I wanted things to go differently. Instead I am going to be using this as a point to shift focus temporarily to Angela’s past. The next two or three chapters will be all about Angela’s early life and they are longer chapters too. After that we are going to come back to the present for a bit, then shift into a similar section for Satya.

There is a lot to cover in both cases and both are difficult to write. Not bad to write, it is just important stuff that needs a lot of very careful attention. I am hoping to have the next chapter out soonish, but DT is also my 2nd priority for long form projects right now.

Who I want to be

This is my first priority for long form projects! The next chapter is currently sitting at 1.5k. We are introducing Hanna’s little sister here, and I am having lots of fun with it. The story so far has been quite disjointed and exposition heavy, but we are going to start to get into the larger threads involving Amelie over the next couple chapters, including the major reasons of why I named the story what I did.

Mermaid Tracer

This is just kinda of being difficult. I have a couple thousand words written but it is just kind of stalled. I might chip at it soon, but it isn’t a high priority right now and I have limited time. I might restructure it to be a lower effort project that supports quick writing sessions and easier editing.

VCG

I know everyone loves this story, and I swear I am going to continue it, but man it is just not high on my priority list for any reason. It is really just a matter of limited time and my current priorities and interestss don’t match up to writing for VCG at the moment.

The Devil Made Me Do It

This is just a lot of easy fun to write, so you might see more chapters of this soon. Expect them to be small, largely unconnected things. Like snap shots into Angela dealing with her new odd life. I have no real idea where the story is actually going to go, and I am not even sure it is going to have a coherent long term story. Just fun nonsense playing around with the idea.

Forgiveness is earned

50% done with the next chapter.

Blind Date

30% done with the next chapter.

Prompts and Other stuff

I did a quick writing exercise last night, I am going to be editing that and putting it up before the end of the week.

I am going to be starting some new project soonish outside of the Overwatch fandom. I have been feeling a big pull to final fantasy VII, specifically some sort of Tifa/Aerith/Cloud AU. Not sure what I want to do with it beyond that, I have been thinking about ideas but not settled on anything.

[kennothythebard]

word count in deh fanfic, or “Dear god what have I gotten myself into”

i was messing around with sorting deh fics by different metrics on ao3. I was surprised to realize that A Worthy Explanation (my fic) is the third longest fic currently on there. The longest is The Desperate Type (which is finished at 88,391 words) and the second longest is “You Know They’re Gonna Think You’re Lovers, Right?” (which has 28/30 chapters at 58,944), while AWE is 50,524 words at fifteen chapters. So let’s do some simple calculations.

TDT consists of 22 chapters with an average of 4,018 words per chapter (rounded up). “Lovers” has 28 chapters currently written with an average of 2,105 words per chapter (rounded down). AWE as 15 chapters currently written with an average of 3,368 per chapter. 

So we can estimate final lengths using these metrics. We already know the final length of TDT (88,391 words). “Lovers” is planned to have 30 chapters, and barring the final two chapters being much longer than previous chapters or an extension, we can estimate the final length to be somewhere around 63,150 words. I don’t really have a set outline for AWE because I’m always open to change things, but the current route I’m taking has an estimated 23 chapters total. Using the mean (which could be completely off depending on how long or short I make future chapters, though I believe the chapters have been getting longer since the beginning) we can estimate that AWE will be 77,464 words long when completed, making it the second longest work in the Dear Evan Hansen tag.

Basically what I’m saying is I had no idea the fic would get this long when I started this endeavor, wtf is wrong with me.