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seavoice · 2 years

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things i loved immensely in greywaren, in no particular order (positivity hour!):

- the world building with the entities and ronan and the lace...extremely romantic! i can’t think of another way to phrase it, it felt suffused with wonder and love and tenderness. maggie said something about how she wouldn’t have given chap 26 unless she was giving away this universe and i think all of her musings on humanity and beauty and fight came through in the world building of it. going out with a bang!

- the sweetmetal lore as well. now a trickier one this is! but i think i mosty love the metaphor? funny enough i wasn’t a great fan of all the implications of the sweetmetal details we learnt in this book, but still a solid solid metaphor for the dreaming and dreams.

- the writing was phenomenal. from a craft perspective. at certain points i was just awed at the writing.

- i am not really a soulmate eternal love girl, as in it doesn’t do anything special for me as a trope, but pynch ether/whatever scenes did make me go OH MAN. i think it was splendidly done. they were wanted, they were wanted, they were wanted. ronan choosing humanity again and again and again. choosing adam too! choosing humanity BECAUSE of adam (and the rest) in the end

- there were two gods in this church, baby!

- love the gangsey all being embroiled in this really intense multiship through magic forestry. CABESWATER YOU WILL ALWAYS BE FAMOUS. when i eventually reread trb sometimes i know that the discovering cabeswater scene will get me bawling. their delight! their RELIEF! their love and wonder! all reframed in my brain. and ronan dreamt it for them...and gansey’s lives and deaths...

- Mother We Share now FIRMLY a lynch fam song

- Ode to My Family now FIRMLY a lynch fam song

- bryde meeting the girl and her holding a hand to her mouth, it was a powerful thing to know you weren’t alone...

- jordan played so small a part in this book, but when she was there she shined. i loved her fight with hennessy, her knowing what she wants, i loved her little domestic routine with declan, i loved being reminded of how resourceful and resilient and dynamic and clever she is in the nathan showdown scene. it made me remember that she was a caretaker for the girls for so many years, and all the love and care that she has cultivated. very thrilling implications of jordan being the hennessy without her mother, but even more so the implication of this jordan who has been standing so close to terror her whole life and not giving in. i wish we got more, but alas. what we got was extremely sweet. jordan flung her hand out at the sky, the wordless gesture for anything. i love that she was the one who got that last bit.

- adam and chainsaw did things to my heart.

- mor’s story was extremely compelling in ways i did not expect. i really feel for her, even if i don’t necessarily vibe with her ending up in the barns apparently in frequent contact with her sons. felt a little like we skipped over all the interesting steps to that resolution. her objects of pain. how even her dreamt sleeping pill/painkiller tablet whatever is infused with misery and pain and the same scene with the kerry beach. the mary who ran away! the mary who wanted to kill god and played with god and ran from god. so many issues she had and created and also left her kids with, but also so many issues she 100% prevented by leaving. love her. i find her endlessly fascinating.

- new fenian and his bag of memories...he is so fun and cheery and upbeat and also definitely a FREAK. enjoy the heartbreaking ramifications of what would you do if your dead father’s love for you was stored in an unchanging version of him who will never be your father? SLAPS

- niall being so passive in this story, in this tragedy is what struck me most fascinating about him. he just lets everyone else make and take the decision, lets everyone else give the ideas and the cues. not mean or small or larger than life or bitter, just an useless king. pop went the mythic legend of niall lynch!

- marie lynch come back what did you want. sorry it’s so funny that she literally wasn’t relevant at all after all the speculation ince opal and her showing up in the book early. what a mental illlness dynasty

- low empathy mor + bipolar niall + curious reckless forest = ronan! call that jesus part two!!! what an origin story i LOVED IT

- loser cringefail marriage enjoyers RISSSEEEE UP

- many thoughts about niall giving ronan all his feelings. his desires and wants and wonders. mor giving him her pain and fear

- the “for the first summer, the barns was paradise to ronan lynch and adam parrish” chapter went SOOOOO HARD. i loved it. imagining a future is hard work! imagining it and changing it is even harder!

- you are made of dreams, he thought, and this world is not for you. the barns already looked like winter.

- paradise, paradise, why would he ever leave?

- i miss knowing where i was going HARDDDD AGREE ADAM PARRISH!!!

- mor-niall and adam-ronan parallels and it’s like. jordeclan you are soooo normal. you are literally so normal healthiest relationship ever sorry that i’d ever joke about you paralleling niall’s life choices 😭 this is a joke btw, i love the parallels of pynch and mor-niall; just makes the choice of them choosing truth and discomfort of facing your voices more hard fought. it’s what i’ve always loved about the pynch dynamic❤️ unable to imagine a future they’d be happy and making it themselves through trial and error

- jordeclan mwah mwah ❤️ i love them choosing each other over and over and how they are the easiest parts of each other’s life. the most honest. the lightest to carry. MAKES ME INSANE. dramatic art hoes

- niall loved declan and declan loved ronan and so ronan lived. can i get an amen! a yeehaw even?

- ronan’s first tether to the human world technically being declan really does so much for me as a concept. he chooses humanity and the only 100% human person he knows is who loves him first. BROTHERS!

- the first person who loves him in the human world is his big brother...rip that got me BAD.

- the freaky Forest. Annihilation ass shit. How delightful for a fan of horror and mythology. I love the haunted house/hungry forest/pleading god of the Barns’ setting.

- hennessy’s fucken mouse 🥺🥺

- declan’s fucken moth 🥺🥺

- we love a little creature...we love a little metaphor...

- carmen was a riot. i loved her becoming progressively unhinged. finally allowing herself to become rude and miserable and helpless. her and hennessy’s whole deal was extremely spicy and fun and i think really really needed and their scene were electric to me! her being like woops liliana is old now😬 kind of made me cackle but im still upset about what happened. her and declan being delusional together was great i love it actually. blasting german opera. rip parsifal and also that detail made me feel very tender

- “last men standing” (last men fucking shot😭) i just gotta mention the ink handover from mor feniall declan to carmen and hennessy because a) that was so funny. (“have you ever been shot?” asks maggie stiefvater character the new fenian dooming carmen into her fate), and b) what an insane line up of people to accomplish anything. to coordinate. ronan is so lucky everyone of them chose that day to not overcomplicate ideas and have no additional agendas, it’s like halley’s comet😭once in 76 years event only

- im not getting into the nathan of it all because this is a positive post and that plotline is something i struggle to be positive about but i did like carmen getting to shoot him for many reasons. one being that she did not actually shoot a single person until now. her finally finally doing something for herself without hundred wrong rationalisations.

- declan getting shot <3 and then immediately not having questions or a bone to pick. babygirl you are sooooo desensitised to inadvertent parental violence! and this wasn’t even that inadvertent

- matthew punching declan <3 we all clapped! him stealing the car and running away was amazing i love him so much. frankly should have smashed his laptop too wtf was declan’s horror story plan

- hennessy’s ARC. her broken, broken, broken heart! that part when ronan is spying on jordan and is like omg jordan is so good at art just like hennessy! she’d amazed him with her casual art. anything could be a medium to hennessy. a discarded pen, dust gathered on the dashboard, convenience store makeup, melted candy, leftover ketchup. hennessy could be mean and clever when she spoke, with her art she was just clever. AND THEN SHE SKETCHES THE HEART AND THE MOUSE WAKES UP!

- omg the mouse woke up...

- i loved every bit of her art making journey here. it kind of brought me back to cdth where jordan is breaking her back with doing all the art and the forgery and and whatnot and hennessy doesnt really take too much of an interest...and all this time they could have aved the girls! but she will save her mouse! we get to see the flip and her careful watchul process and it kind of. it changed me.

- who was jordan hennessy without her mother? she was jordan.

- but also. who was jordan in white? she was hennessy despite everything despite her mother’s base it was HER who made her her...hennessy i love you. i’m glad you love yourself.

- an image she knew part of her would be pursuing for the rest of her life, if they survived this. hennessy’s pursuit of brilliance and excellence is something we don’t talk about enough but it is SUCH a big part of her. perfectionist. her eye for detail. and her taking it into how she wants to live her life wah <3

-her and ronan are so precious to me. the first friend who did not share her face.

- the lace scene where she find him and does not let him go they’d both been screaming.<3 you’re the only one i would. they’d both been screaming.

- “fuck you, this is so good.” SICK ASS BLACK OUT TATTOO. how hennessy’s human drive and friendship and recognition and cleverness and love literally infused ronan with comparable strength of sweetmetal to the ley line...THE MOMENT!

- snakeskin tattoo gets second mention i love it. calla <3 almost like you are psychic girl

- back to hennessy, i found the way her relationship with her mother to me dealt so wonderful. one thing that struck me was that scene with jordan in white where they are like “oh, didn’t know she was like that at home as well. i’m sorry that must be difficult” and that acknowledgement MATTERING to her. i think a lot about hennessy excising that memory of her mother from her copies; none of them really KNOW. no one has ever known her mother and said those words to her. no one knows her mother accept her lace. no one to tell about the horrific neglect and abuse except herself over and over until the last minute where she has to rip herself out and it’s with a version of herself who has never been touched by her mom. lots of thoughts.

- hennessy/carmen dynamic rocked idc rushed or not or whatever i was extremely extremely charmed by it for reasons i’ll elaborate later on, but mainly: two people suffering who finally get to be awful and horrible and real without worrying about the other person. without thinking the other person had the answers! and finding it thrilling and freeing but also painful!! because they don’t want to be caustic but also. they kind of do? i am UPSET BEYOND WORDS about carlianessy dreams being shattered because i was gunning for it sinc 2019 but i absolutely still love hennessy/carmen

- very sexy too. i love women. farooq-lane, burning. hennessy creating herself, now with intention!

- ronan’s monologues were beautiful. i wish we got a little more of awake ronan doing stuff, but asleep ronan having many beautiful musings about the nature of humanity and love was wonderful. he is full of love, he is the lynch pin (heh heh), he is the god and devotee!! character of all time

- he was sentimental of his lovingly decorated body 🥺

- chapter 26 you will always be famous. it touched me in ways i can’t fully articulate! numquam solus. a funeral or a baptism. thank you, thank you, thank you, ronan thought with such relief, such relief. maggie wrote that for all the bitches who had an almost academic and definitely unhealthy obsession with death/their death in their childhood.

- glad to know the answer to the age old fandom question of what would declan do if he lost both brothers in one fell swoop was: murder-suicide

- to be fair though if i thought of thoughts such as: he did not question that declan would want to keep him secure; he just assumed that he would while i wandered around the city trying to find out if my baby brother died i would have also gone for the same option. king shit

- loved declan’s story for many reasons, i loved him miserable and guilty and suffering. loved ch 27. but also what i possibly love most about ch 27 is the moment on the sidewalk where he’s like there’s a version of me that doesn’t get off this step until my heart stops because it’s all a little too much. but then he squares his shoulders goes and tries to get the sweetmetal for ronan anyway and frees the prisoners on the way. which is where i think his so far kind of parallel arc to niall’s splits off in the opposite direction.

- i think i have such complicated feelings on the lynch fam resolution and declan’s memory of his father in particular, but there is so much going on there with him finally getting the memories of both his parents, it not fixing anything but it STILL being something that eases declan in a way, that i can love and feels incredibly true to his character. i think that proof of love does make a difference for him and his view of his father (someone who was a scared selfish short sighted dumb man, rather than a straight up cruel bitter one that didn’t care to teach ronan and thought declan was expendable) and genuinely in a more nuanced way than i’ve been shitposting about djcdscbfkc. also (would have) parallels (paralleled) ronan’s view on declan and niall and whatnot, if you know we had got ronan’s view on like, his family and friends, sometime in this book. but not the place for that lmao. positivity hour.

- i don’t think it should erase his anger at his father or the trauma that he brought into their lives, and am soooo not a fan of the whole my childhood was content actually the WHOLE view of my family was a grief-fuelled lie thing, i feel dissatisfied beyond words with that choice, but i do feel declan considering it on the other side of his childhood as someone who has fucked up with dealing with grief and trauma and magical wards is powerful on its own. also “to copy a person, one must become that person for a little while” policy of the dream memories imo make it more blurry. i think FEELING that fear and love and uh, stupidity, is more mind melting than just seeing the memories.

- side note, i love a lot about how maggie wrote the memories of mor and niall. i realised only in hindsight that the dreamy, blending nature of both their povs is supposed to signify declan viewing them both and getting both sides of the story? feeling both sides of the story. very nice.

- side note, fun short term exposition. long term, fucking INSANE to have both your parents worst/most awful/”loving but you didn’t get to have it” memories in your head. i love it what a bad but incredibly sexy to explore idea <3

- talking about dreams written well. ronan’s dreams in the battle!!! that battle rocked from a writing standpoint even if i didn’t care about nathan enough for me to fully like it to max potential. the repeating dreams and snippets of bryde’s monologues, and the lace and greywaren showdown. EPIC.

- he woke up!

- HE WOKE UP.

- it was not a choice at all.

- i AM one of those things. freaking slayy

- big big fan of the parallels with adam and hennessy and i LOVE the further implication of her saving him, i loved that hennessy saved him for ronan and as a challenge to herself to save another person from the lace. i think great jumping off point. but unpopular opinion unfortunately in the context itself adamnessy did not do as much for me as i might have expected. that “hush i’ve worked too hard...” like it was fun, but i wish we could have got the situation in some other way. and maybe i would have liked to hear what you and jordan had to say to each other actually hennessy!!! all said and done this is in things i loved because RODAMNESSY IS REAL, and those two blokes WILL owe hennessy for the rest of their lives!!!

- adam rent asunder by the lace...rip to him. his mind orbs 😭 i actually really enjoyed jordan trying to keep him alive of it all. she’s so good. also bisexual solidarity

- matthew and bryde scenes were gold. clinical depression gesfvgdhffv. also i needed more from them, actually even this particular line of thinking but: if i had to learn to be sad, you had to learn to be happy. lot’s of feelings about matthew as the bridge between two siblings he considers as deeply unhappy individuals, one who was suicidal for a period of time in high school and one who he is starting to see recently as fallible and clueless on how to move forward, and how he has to re-contextualise that he was dreamt as an ebullient loving easy brother, who was the favorite of his dreamTM mother who was much the same. and even without the dream thing, just as a little boy in that situation :( we did not delve into it, but the crumbs of this was much appreciated.

- also EXTREMELY hilarious. CHIROPRACTOR SONG.

- DUDIFER. matthew you are my son

- bryde amused me. what a shitty life. rip man you were BUILT for doom. ronan omg.

- talking about matthew i think i am doing the heavy lifting of liking his arc in my head, but for my peace of mind i do think it’s implied declan-matthew resolve their issues in a way by the time epilogue rolls around. the whole moth story got me for a bunch of reasons, but the biggest is nothing to do with niall but actually about matthew being the one to re-gift it as a wedding present and declan releasing it. crazy ass metaphor. they get better i gotta believe that. the both of them are SO important to me.

- the lynch brothers are friends again! they hugged! REJOICEEE

- foxway mention!!!! does it matter if the bride and groom know them or not??? this was for one person and that is MEEE

- i think getting wedded by your high school accountant/local psychic is a fun and eye opening experience. not inviting the hitman that beat you up and murdered your father is a fair choice, but i also think that would have been fun and eye-opening gdfcagfahg

- seondeok mention! henry mention! I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THAT DIVORCE. rip a fulfilling non-traumatising arc for declan and henry though. they are just doing black market crime now? welp. this is positive because it’s tragically funny.

- boo no sarchengsey. love gansey and blue troubled academics but boo sociology. in my brain blue does dendrology and gansey archaeology i feel they’re really into fieldwork but oh well. academic rivals <3 henry is the jilted lover they reunite with amen.

- ahhh ronsey. orange juice. past lives. them

- love ronan getting to travel and be free to guide and help other dreamers. i do not buy that he is so settled in his life he is completely hundred percent done with difficult responses to tragedy/anger/grief etc like the last bit of this book implied, but i guess nothing DISPROVED it either. we just don’t know enough.

- in the many, i’m sure riveting, christmas dinner battles of fed adam vs black market criminals henry and declan, i’m on the side of black market criminals henry and declan.

- art therapist hennessy CANON baby!!!!! how does it feel to only win. very good.

- again ronanessy, travelling this way and that four years later...love to see it <3

- sweet potato farm internship for matthew...love that for him

- jordeclan saving the sexy guestlist for the bigger wedding so they can convince the new fenian that the barns handcat wedding is the InTiMAtE one is my personal canon. personal jesus.

- “it occurred to Blue and me the other day that being a teenager really sucked.” <3 i will take that as really hopeful words with me out of this series. i didn’t need the really happy picture perfect ending from this series, but there is something really powerful in reading about a beautiful, magical, and painful too, but a really beautiful adolescence and having the character think back on it and say “oh, i didn’t know it could get better”. rest of their lives left, baby, and each slender present becoming the beautiful past you make your peace with and are actually, hey, kind of happy to leave behind, because there is some future left for you to discover.

#greywaren spoilers #ronan lynch #declan lynch #jordan hennessy #carmen farooq lane #matthew lynch #niall lynch #mor o corra #the new fenian #birdverse #the dreamer trilogy #or just KNOWS but i think we're due a big reveal in greywaren. everything about declan pov is like skirting around something hes #just making a lot of kind of negative posts which i dont feell bad about cause like. my thoughts. but i thought i should get down what i #loved on paper too #greywaren #it is soooo long and rambly but it is for me

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clotpolesonly · 8 months

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So, I started a cleaning job where I don't have to talk to anyone, which is lovely, but it also meant I started listening to audiobooks, and I've started listening to some book series I've been hearing about here and there, and the latest was The Raven Cycle. Why? Because you posted about it. You are literally the only person on my dashboard to post about it, but the few ones I have seen over the last months? years? have been enough for me to be assured in it having queer rep, being well written, and potentially worth my time. And yeah, it very much was, cause now I'm kinda hooked on it, like not just Adam/Ronan, tho very much them as well, but Maggie even got me caring about a straight couple with Gansey/Blue, cause she just writes such beautiful and unique characters!!! And anyway, besides asking you if you have some favourite AO3 recs (Don't even care much about the ship, as long as it's with these characters) I come having finished The Raven King a week ago, and now humbly but also very desperately asking, do you have any other book recommendations like TRC for me to listen to?? (Oh, and maybe also whether or not the dreamer triology will be just as good? Cause I'm curious about it having Ronan in focus, but more than the story, it's the characters that got me hooked on TRC, and like Maggie Stiefvater's writing style, but yeah I'm unsure how much of Adam there is in the trilogy, and the new characters, are they just as intriguing??)

YESSSSSS I LOVE SNAGGING PEOPLE AND DRAGGING THEM INTO MY FANDOMS XD WELCOME

the Dreamer Trilogy has its pros and its cons. if does significantly shift the focus of the narrative away from the established group, so if the Gangsey found family dynamic is a really big factor in your enjoyment and you don't want to be without it, you'll be disappointed by TDT because the rest of the gang simply isn't present 😭 it's very much Lynch-(and new characters)-focused.

Ronan is the main character and gets the most screen time, but honestly, Declan steals the show in that series. people can go into TDT Declan haters and come out of it with rabid Declan brain rot afdkjgh, i for one am obsessed with him. Matthew gets a real arc too, which i love for him. Adam doesn't have a huge role but he is around and relevant. i am IN LOVE with some of the new characters, and Maggie got us again with the straights!!! she makes us fucking YEARN WITH THE STRAIGHTS, on par with Bluesey imo, the new canon ship destroys me ok??

i will say that TDT doesn't feel as cohesive and satisfying in the overall narrative structure sense, compared to TRC. there are some things about it that confuse/frustrate me or don't make sense if you look at it too closely 😅 but there's so much really interesting compelling character/relationship work that it makes up for it, for me. i enjoyed TDT a lot, have read it multiple times, and will definitely read it again. it expands upon the world and lore, and i'm a sluuuut for complicated dysfunctional family dynamics so the Lynches get me good.

as for other recs! in case my unrelenting TRC blogging isn't damning enough evidence, i'll admit openly that i tend to just read the same thing over and over again instead of reading anything new lfkdjgh, so i don't actually HAVE anything else to rec myself, i am useless to you 😅😅😅 so instead i reached out to some other fans on discord and got suggestions from them to share with you!

The Scorpio Races (also Maggie Stiefvater)

The Wicker King (K Ancrum)

Aristotle & Dante (Benjamin Alire Saenz)

A Darker Shade of Magic (VE Schwab)

Iron Widow (Xiran Jay Zhao)

In Other Lands (Sarah Rees Brennan)

Hell Followed With Us (Andrew Joseph White)

The Darkest Part of The Forest (Holly Black)

All Of Us Villains duology (Amanda Foody, CL Herman)

Self Made Boys (Anna Marie Mclemore)

Legendborn (Tracy Deonn)

Folk of the Air series (Holly Black)

Six of Crows duology (Leigh Bardugo)

Winternight trilogy (Katherine Arden)

Gideon the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir)

The Atlas Six (Olivie Blake)

so, again, i have not personally read any of these books to make the recs more specific or say what part of them invokes TRC vibes, but it sure is a place to start?? 😂

for fic recs, oh god, my brain is SWISS CHEESE, let's see if i can remember and dig up anything aldkfjg

(ok first i rec my own fics #shameless self promo)

Magnetic i've read SO MUCH and will again, it's everything to me

don't it beat a slow dance to death is a timeloop thing A+

I'm an Empathetic Drunk, Ok? is the first long TRC fic i read i think

All That I Know is Gone has dreamer!Declan, obsessed with this

King by the Roadside Gansey-didn't-die-the-first-time + polyam

A Sound Of Thunder Declan died instead of Niall 😭😭

aaaaaand these are the ones that are coming to my mind as of right now, the first 3 are all Pynch. i think the 4th has Pynch but it's mostly brother feels - that one introduces some elements from TDT but i don't thiiiiiink anything that would be a significant spoiler as long as you've read the short story Opal, which was included in my physical copy of TRK if it wasn't in yours, i have the epub). could hold off on that one until you (maybe) read TDT (if you wanna), but i've read it too many times not to rec it. 5th one hooks up the whole gang in one big polycule and i love it for that, and the last one hurts my HEART as a Declan stan but it's otherwise a great fic 😂

anybody else with TRC recs, add on/reply/hit @so-very-asleep up with 'em!!!

#and the answer is #so-very-asleep #TRC #TDT

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ragesingoddess · 4 years

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The gangsey as youtubers pt2

Talking to our boyfriend solely in vines until he catches up (Henry and Blue ft Gansey)

Gansey manages to get Adam to do a video with him about the story of how they met. The video turned out at least half an hour and it was basicly Gansey rambling about how great he thought Adam was all accompanied by Ronan in the background pretending he didn't basicly fall in love with Adam the first time he laid his eyes on him. (".. I thought he was incredible. What about you Ronan?" "I thought he was an asshole.")

Henry films a weekly vlog where he tries to introduce the rest of the gangsey to kpop. Noah immediately falls in love and he and Henry have lengthy conversations about kpop bands, fighting about which one they like the best. Ronan calls Noah a traitor, blasts the murder squash song two times louder and three times more frequently and prays the two of them never decide to bring Matthew into this madness. They do. It's awesome.

Blue and Adam frequently go thrifting together and sometimes they even bring Gansey with them too.

Okay remember that one scene where they are discussing about that box Ronan dreams and Gansey and Adam are like 'maybe it's ancient Greek' and Ronan just goes like: "No. The ancient greeks didn't have a word for blue." and Adam just stares like "What the fuck, Ronan?"? Well Ronan pulls shit like that all. The. Time. About anything. Blue and Henry are painting their nails and Henry is whining about how he can't touch his phone because his nails are still not dry and Ronan is like 'you should pull them under cold water' and Blue just stares at him in disbelief.

At some point they decide to make a board game tournament between them. They play monopoly once but that's it. Noah and Gansey are pretty uninterested in the first place and Blue refuses to play because fuck capitalism™ and all. So it just ends up with Adam, Ronan and Henry shouting at each other restlessly because Adam just outright refuses to lose, Ronan has an incredible time annoying the shit out of Adam by buying random things and still ending up winning and Henry is so terrible at the game that he still plays because it's fun watching the others laugh just wt how bad he is at it.

Blue and Ronan have a baking series. Ronan is pretty bad at baking of any kind but he is there because no one else accepted to do the series with Blue and Blue kind of blackmailed Ronan. They bring Matthew frequently as a guest and at some point he ends up becoming a regular. The audience adore how impressed he is by literally anything they make especially when Ronan decides to fuck it and like, put an egg in the bowl so that he can say he helped.

Another fan Favorite duo is Adam and Declan. They don't interact much in the channel because generally Declan only shows up when Ronan wants to get on his nerves and films him randomly in their vlogs. But gradualy he starts being there on their random videos and between his and Adam's casual conversations their dynamic starts appearing interesting. They start off pretty reserved and forcefully polite but as they become more comfortable around each other they hold some of the best debates. And that's how they start their own special. They start debating about everything. Anything. About whether you should sleep with socks on or not, which is the superior vegetable and the best spice girls song. The most amazing thing is how serious they are about everything and it manages to crack everyone else up, ending up laughing their asses off in the background.

They do karaoke nights once in two months. Usually they are drunk. Usually they go viral.

They do all of the popular challenges at some point (as I said it's kind of Noah's special on the channel). Noah does the friendship tag with all of them and every video is titled the same 'Best friend tag with my best friend'. Wholesome things. They play truth or dare but it never ends too well because Ronan always chooses dare and usually Gansey ends up crying because he usually gets drunk and becomes a bit too invested on Ronan's general wellbeing. Adam, who always stays sober just films everything with his phone and tries to comfort Gansey with hugging and patting his head awkwardly while sushing Blue and Henry who are making fun of Gansey behind his back.

part one: https://he-is-half-my-soul.tumblr.com/post/189644812528/the-gangsey-as-you-tubers-tho-i-cant-get-over

#ronan lynch #adam parrish #pynch #the raven cycle #trc #call down the hawk #cdth #richard gansey #blue sargent #noah czerny #henry cheng #sarchengsey #The raven boys

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off-in-the-moors · 4 years

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Joseph Kavinsky analysis, part 1

aka how did I get here and why is he the reason

Warnings: spoilers for the whole Raven Cycle, mentions of: drug-use, abuse, death, murder, homophobic slurs, xenophobia

Part 1 // Part 2

After finishing The Raven Cycle and analyzing every chapter, character and the overarching plot with my friend, we were left feeling empty. It's been few months, I kept looking-up more TRC related things, other people's opinions, look through fandom content and even read some post from the author's, now deleted, tumblr account, trying to find answers to why I'm feeling like this. Why the books seem to decline for me in quality as I kept reading? Why I can't see Ronan in the same light as the rest of the fandom? Why I couldn't like the author? And the answer was looking me in the eyes the whole time.

"Depending on where you began the story, it was about Joseph Kavinsky."

I loved his character from the moment we met him in The Dream Thieves and still think about him to this day. But why? In a way, Kavinsky is too familiar to me, from his attitude, through appearance to his voice. It’s like I knew him, and this isn’t surprising. I met/saw Kavinskys on the streets, I know Kavinskys, and I was a Kavinsky once in my life. Although I'm the opposed to him, I still sympathies with him and understand how it feels to be in dark places in your life. And I'm not the only one, many people adore him and don't deny his actions to be terrible. But on the other side, the majority of fans hates him and titles him "the worst/most evil antagonist of the series". But why? What about K makes him so polarizing? The simple answer is: the way he was presented and the function he played in the plot. Even then, K's whole arc in TDT was handled horribly and damaged the way readers will view, not only people like K but also themselves. This and also future posts, I’ll be analyzing everything relied to K, including his treatment after book's release by the author and what some deleted scenes and unused ending can shine on.

This is part 1 of a series of posts to come.

This part is about the narrative and characters views of Kavinsky.

Narrative and characters

Narrative is a powerful tool of telling a story, well crafted and coupled with character's internal-voice makes the reader view the story under different light. In a PoV of one character, one thing might bring-up different emotions and ideas, than the others. Exploring relationships and events differ, because everybody experience it differently. But problem begins when the narrative forces a reader to a opinion, without backing it up with reasons or giving a opposing one. In case of Joseph Kavinsky, before we properly meet him, we are told by the characters to hate him and the narrative backs them up in reasons to hate him. All the reasons given to us at that time, boil down to "I heard a rumor."

Gansey hates him, because "There was nothing about Kavinsky that wasn’t despicable" and "he thinks life is a music video". He doesn't want Ronan to associated with him, which is connected with him covering and getting Ronan's ass for the mess he made, having him project his anger and frustration he has with Ronan on to K, who part-takes in the same activities and probably with Ronan, is understandable. But I didn't expect much from a guy who: payed the school officials so they won't kick Ronan out; insulted Adam and throw Adam’s abuse at his face, just to instant of apologizing to him, make a pity party for himself (also having Adam apologies to Gansey for his rightful outburst isn't okay), is fine with having a romantic relationship with Blue while she's still with Adam, hurting him even further but makes it all about himself, etc. Him hating K, just because of his lifestyle, made sense. But were the line was crossed, was when he started to decide on other people's worth. Lines like "we matter" (on which I'll extend later in the post) or "Ronan is fixable and has a soul [Kavinsky doesn't]", were used not only to show what Gansey himself thinks of K (he isn't a human being to him), but also demonize K and make the reader not consider him an equal to the Gangsey (a teenage).

Blue hates him, because he's yet another Raven Boy. Her hatred comes mostly from her distance for them, rich boys with privilege to which Gansey gang is an exception (although two out of four are exactly the kind she hates, and she told Noah directly she wouldn't be friends with him if he was alive) (There can be made a whole post about Blue's hypocrites regarding Raven Boys, but this isn't it). She also talks about how she doesn't feel comfortable around K and "if she couldn’t forgive Kavinsky for always managing to make her feel so insignificant", which makes sense. But while describing him, she calls him "a import from somewhere else", not only lessening him as a person but also making a xenophobic comment, noting his long nose as one of the factors (you could say, she meant him being from New Jersey, but you don't "import" stuff from inside a country, you only "import" from abroad and K is Bulgarian, doesn't matter if he's an immigrant or just has Bulgarian roots). Later, while discussing what to do with K draining the ley lines, Greyman offers to talk to him, to which Blue asks him "can you make him feel worthless while you do?”. Yes, she asked a hit-man, who killed not only Niall Lynch but also multiple people (including three on pages, which was described in the case of the ones breaking into Montmouth) for money. (Yes, fans say it's fine he murdered Niall, because he was a dick and horrible father, but what we forget is that it wasn't a fast death. It was slow and brutal, having him bludgeoned to send a message to Declan. No "he was a weapon in Greenmatle's hand" can excuse it.). Plus, he beat-up and threatened Declan with a gun if he doesn't give him the Greywaren. "Making him feel worthless" can only mean the worst. Kavinsky was a asshole, but he didn't deserved that. Also Blue gives the idea to give Kavisnky to the Greyman instant of Ronan, which was shot down, but not because it's horrible, inhuman and they can't decide on someone else's life, but because they think Greenmantle's people will come back also for Ronan. They were ok, with K being basically a scapegoat so Ronan will live.

Adam just "hates that prick" and "looked at the table with a studied disinterest" when K approached their table at Nino's, those are his only interaction in anything Kavinsky related (In a part regarding the "original" ending, we'll see it wasn't always the case.).

Noah barely exists in the series after The Raven Boys and never comes in contact with K or gives any opinion on him, outside of "ducked his head down into his shoulders, but couldn't take his eyes off the newcomer".

Ronan's relation with K could be its own post all together and there already are some good post about it, but for this one, I'll only mention few things. He gives us a very "I hate him but I'm into this lifestyle" attitude. He races against K but doesn't want to have anything to do with him or he's "dogs". (Yes, Dream Packs canon name is "Kavinsky's pack of dogs" as Ronan calls them. Ironically, Ronan gets angry then Declan and K called him "Gansey's dog" but is fine when Gansey calls him "his dog".) He never thanked or acknowledged K saved his life from the Night Horror. He accepted K's help in dreaming-up the new Pig but afterwords ditches him without even a slit gratefulness (his motivation being remembering Gansey's words), and mocks that K thought there could be anything between them (friendship or relationship, it dependents how you interpret it), turning this into just using K to get what he wanted. And yes, what K did while Ronan slept (tracing Ronan's back tattoo with his finger) was unacceptable, if it really happened and wasn't just phantom-touch while falling asleep (if it was real, it can be interpreted as K acting out of his internalized homophobia, letting himself a moment of “curiosity”, but it still wouldn't make it fine).

Ronan and K insult one-another multiple times through-out the story but the difference is quite showing. K's insults are mostly homophobic, calling Ronan a "fag" or implying Ronan and Gansey are together. This is a typical teenage insults, but are also showing of K's internalized homophobia if viewed through "Don’t say Dick Gansey, man. Do not say it. He is never going to be with you. And don’t me tell you don’t swing that way, man. I’m in your head." and "It's a bomb. Just like you." scenes.

But Ronan, excepting the typical insults like "ball-sack", goes after who K is. "Bulgarian mobster Jersey trash piece of shit" or "Russian" (to the latter, K responded "Hey now, let's not make this ugly") are personal, referring not only to from where K's from, implying he's a mobster like his father and just calling him "a waste". Unfortunately, K's whole character is already one big stereotype of Slavs as viewed not only by Americans. But insulting someone for being "Bulgarian", something they had no control over, is xenophobic. (And for "Russian", as a Slav myself, let me tell you. Calling a non-Russian Slav "Russian" is a quick way to get on their bad side.) And if you're like "Ronan isn't xenophobic, because he's Irish" or "Maggie isn't xenophobic, because Ronan...", you have no idea how things work in Europe. This is the same argument as "He can't be racist, because he's black". TRC fandom is always ready to bring-up all K's sins and even enlarge them, but when in comes to Ronan, all his sins are either forgotten or excused.

One more thing I want to touch on is one of K's parties. After Monmouth got broken into by people looking for Greywaren (which Greyman broke into first), Gansey thinks it must be Kavinsky's doing, because of the fake ID left in front of the door. Him and Ronan go to K's party, he tells them, it's a substance party and asks where are theirs. As an answer, Ronan hits him in the face and throws through a car, just to show him his blooded knuckles with "This is your substance.". The rest is Gansey and Ronan not believing K, that he didn't trash their place, and a "different Gansey" throwing a Molotov cocktail at K's car. After that, they leave. But one thing isn't sitting right with me. The "This is your substance" is a beloved, may I say iconic, scene that is glorified by fans and cited as this "Ronan is so cool and K soo deserved it" thing.

Here's the thing. K is in full right. It's his party, on his rules. Gansey and Ronan just came from nowhere, probably for the first time, so the rule is stated for them. And Ronan's response? Physically assault K. Even if he's angry about the apartment, still he shouldn't just assault him. And Gansey does nothing. And one more thing: K never hits Ronan back. Not in next chapters, not at the end. Never.

Before the chapter ends, we get probably my most hated line from this book:

"Closing his eyes, Gansey leaned his head back on his seat, chin tilted up, throat green in the dash lights. There was still an unsafe sort of smile about his mouth — what a torment the possibility in that smile was — and he said, “There was never a time when that could’ve been you and me. You know the difference between us and Kavinsky? We matter."

We matter. And he doesn't. I could talk about this line and how damaging it is to people who see themselves in Kavinsky, but instant I'll say, why I hate it.

I have anxiety mixed with being introverted and back-in-the-day I felt isolated from my classmates, desperate for friends but only had toxic ones who dropped me so the popular girls would talk with them, just to be friends with me again after some time, bullied to the point of breaking multiple times, and hating myself for not fitting in, unable to connected with my peers in anyway. The line "we matter" echos my worst fear and thoughts from that time. "Everyone matter, you don't". I was too young to even have those thoughts, but they were always there. In the back of my head, like a recurring nightmare.

Just the idea, someone can say with confidence that someone, anyone, doesn't matter, makes me sick. No one has the inside to what's going on in someones life, to what thought are plaguing their head. Everyone's life matter and to say something like this in a book targeted to 12-18 year olds, who are at there most vulnerable stage, is not only irresponsible but enraging. Gansey is saying this about a guy his age, who is drug-addicted and self-destructive, because he doesn't like him and wants Ronan to stay away from. No one calls him out on it. Not Ronan, not the narrative. Nothing.

Until the kidnapping of Matthew and the paradox/question "did the tattoo tracing scene happened?", Kavinsky did nothing to earn hatred from the reader. He was living his life, being a stupid, reckless teenage boy with a power to get everything he wanted. Ask yourself a question: "If you had the power to pulled anything* from your dreams, wouldn't you go crazy with it? Maybe in a very selfish way?"

* Throughout TRC and CDtH, we see no limit to what a dreamer can pull-out. From a pen or working car, living creatures (animals, copies of real people or purely made-up) to abstract things, like a word with power to animate the dead or an apocalypses.

Yes, K's dreaming drained the ley lines, causing Cabeswater to disappear. But did K knew about it? He knew that he needed to wait for it to recharge before dreaming more things and he did just that. The over-draining was cause by preparations for this Fourth of July party (dreaming many copies of his Mitsubishi) but same did Ronan’s dreaming (but Cabeswater acts as weird gatekeeper, so Ronan seems to be forgiven). But did he knew about Cabeswater? Or furthermore, Glendower? We can't confirm or deny it, but considering K isn't from Henrietta and probably is there only for school, he's there for about 2 years. Would he be interested in some random forest or some Welsh King, which just idea of him being in America is so far fetched to believe in?

No. All he was interested it, was parting and wasting himself away.

We don't get any other or opposing opinions on Kavinsky, only the ones given by Gangsey. They are the outsiders looking in, not having any inside, just rumors and their shallow observations/interactions. But we don't even get any "inside", not from other Raven Boys or even the Dream Pack (who are barely characters). After K's death, the only thing we get is Gangsey's not caring or being glad K's gone. Aglionby is silent and Henrietta, doesn't even acknowledge Fourth of July's Party even happened (but to be honest, the town feels like a theater stage than a living place). The only mentions about K that gives some idea someone noticed anything, was his name alongside Whelk’s and Dittley's in the newspaper at the end of BLLB (but this plot point is never mentioned again).

#joseph kavinsky #anti maggie stiefvater #anti raven cycle #anti trc

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bookish-mind · 4 years

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I read call down the hawk, here’s my aching heart:

*spoilers*

(I wasn’t planning on making a long post about this book but I couldn’t help myself, I had too much to say and I needed a place to scream about pynch)

“This is going to be a story about the Lynch brothers” I knew that already so why am I crying, already, the first line and I’m crying

It mentioned Ronan living somewhere other than the barns after Niall died and I’m just here like,, you can say Monmouth it’s ok

“Adam Parrish was the destination of this road trip” and “Ronan missed him like a lung” my heart my heart my heart

“the guy he loved” PLEASE

Ronan Lynch upon seeing Adam Parrish for the first time: *literally prays*

I see the obsession with Adam’s hands goes way back

“Funny how quickly a handful of weeks could render something unrecognizable” I know ronan was talking about the weather/the campus but my stomach dropped pls this better not be pynch foreshadowing

Their reunion was so chaotic I’d expect nothing else tbh

The watch keeps track of Ronan’s time zone I can’t-

“He was with Adam, and Adam still loved him” PLS THE USE OF THE L WORD KILLS ME EVERY TIME

“there was burnished Gansey, who might not have saved Ronan’s life in high school, but at the very least kept it mostly out of Ronan’s reach so that he could not take it down and break it” this line bothers me bc gansey literally did save Ronan’s life that was the whole godamn point 🙃

Objectively I understand that the crying club are probly decent ppl but subjectively they ain’t no gangsey that’s for sure

“he longed for him even while holding him” pls the yearning,, it’s too much for my frail heart

Bryde needs to gtfo of Ronan’s head is what need to happen

Who is lindenmere I only know Cabeswater

Ronan is crying I’m crying we’re all crying

It breaks my heart that Ronan is still yearning for something more while the rest of the gangsey are out there living

Gansey is chained to a tree in Oregon, seems legit

Chainsaw knows how to say “Atom” I’m fucking crying

“What, Declan? I’m trying to fucking tow a cow” I love this book

Matthew be like “I’ve been staring at the edge of the water long as I can remember never really knowing why”

I literally had a headcanon that Ronan says I love u to Adam in Latin

“He sucked in more longing with every inhale, he exhaled some of his happiness on the other side” this godamn book I swear 😩

“dreamt of you” AGSHSJAK

Oof I kinda love Parsifal all he wants to do is eat some bienenstich made by his momma

Wait wait wait these Niall and aurora doppelgängers are confusing me

“I saved your life because I love you” HE SAID IT OUT LOUD ! HE SAID IT ! IT HAS BEEN SAID

I know it’s common knowledge at this point that they are in an established loving relationship but it hits me the same every time I’m reminded

“It was possible no two students at aglionby had ever come away with such a thorough understanding of Latin (or, possibly, of each other)” I have no words

Declan Lynch falling in love with a dream? More likely than you’d think

Man I hope at the end of all this Declan gets to punch a judge and go somewhere to live and breathe art for the rest of his life

This whole dreamers are born to die young theme is stressing me out

“Ronan, I know you” literally everything they say to each other knocks the air out of my lungs

“They hugged again, merrily, waltzing messily in the kitchen, and kissed, merrily, waltzing more” brb if you need me I’ll be reading this line over and over again for the rest of eternity

Two things: 1) gansey left his mint plant for Ronan to take care of 2) ronan dreamed a literal sun to keep the plant alive when he could have just as easily put it by a window like a normal person that’s the cutest bro shit I’ve ever seen

“Adam stopped breathing” please stiefvater imagine how tired we are

Also where tf is opal I miss the lil weirdo

“he missed him acutely even as he was looking at him” it’s too much,, it’s all too much

Oh hell ya Ronan and Jordan/Hennessy/all the other girls finally met I been waiting for this one

Waaait is the dark lady seashore niall’s dream space like Cabeswater/lindenmere is Ronan’s ??

Oh Matthew, my sweet boy, he figured out he’s a dream

Jordan. Is. Painting. Declan. I. Can’t. Breathe.

Oh damn ok so the lace is trynna get out and destroy the world ? Is that it ?

Matthew asking “Do I have a soul?” broke me

Matthew said “I’m the fake brother” and Declan uno reversed that shit so fast

Alright lindenmere I see you I see you but the thing is.. I miss my girl Cabeswater

OPAL FINALLY

“He didn’t have it in him to love another dream. It hurt too bad. Loving anything did” ouch :(

Fuck fuck fuck this is the part where chaos erupts

Damn those sundogs are cool af tho

I swear I didn’t breathe until I knew Matthew and Declan were alive holy shit

Declan thinking “The world was broken” and “I never actually lived” </3

Let Ronan and Declan hug each other challenge

Adam Parrish please pick up the goddamn phone I am begging you

The way Hennessy is so in awe that Ronan has complete trust of lindenmere/his subconscious made me ache bc it took a helluva lot for him to get to this point

“Hennessy?” “Lynch.” “I’ve been alone a long time” excuse me I’m gonna need a minute-

The way Ronan describes what the lace is to him,, I’m fucking sobbing

Hennessy and Ronan’s swords are badass

I still don’t trust bryde but he got them out of there so points to him I guess :/

Where’s book 2 I need book 2

#call down the hawk #cdth #ronan lynch #declan lynch #matthew lynch #jordan hennessy #gansey #adam parrish #pynch #the dreamer trilogy #trc #maggie stiefvater

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ravencyclebigbang · 4 years

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Raven Cycle Big Bang 2020 Masterlist

The 2020 Raven Cycle/Call Down The Hawk Big Bang has come to a close!

Twenty-six teams (and some…) created a ton of great fanfic and fanart over the course of the event. When we started this event we couldn’t have known what 2020 would end up being, so our appreciation goes to all participants for being so resilient and marvellous and sticking with us until the very end.

A Big Bang is traditionally a fandom event that produces 10k+ words fan fictions and associated art, all fully complete. That’s all the reading and looking your art might desire!!!

Please make sure to show your love to all creators by commenting, kudosing and sending loving pigeons! And stay tuned, because we might have a little Post-Bang Giveaway ready for you…

We have an Ao3 collection in case you want to filter by tags and ratings and the like. Below the cut is a full master list of the various contributions to the TRC Big Bang, so they can be browsed with ease.

Team #1: that perilous stuff (which weighs upon the heart)

Fanfic: AO3 Art: Tumblr

Writer: @saywhatjessie (tumblr)/JessJesstheBest (AO3)

Artist: @pygmypouter (tumblr)

Beta: @rroguess (tumblr)

Synopsis: “Uh, Mr. Parrish? You’d like to read for Lady Macbeth?” Adam felt his eye twitch, even while he nodded. It was true that even at an all boy’s school where boys would have had to read the female parts, Adam probably wouldn’t have normally volunteered to read Lady Macbeth. But Ronan had called him a nerd. So he was prepared to be the biggest nerd Ronan had seen. “I know what I’m about, ma’am.” Or Ronan and Adam volunteer to read for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in class. Shenanigans ensue.

Team #2: Uncanny Omens

Fanfic: AO3 | gthechangeling Art: Tumblr | drawfulneutral Art: Tumblr

Writer: @yesterdarling (tumblr)/YesterDarling (AO3)

Artist: @gthechangeling (tumblr)

Artist: @drawfulneutral (tumblr)

Beta: ghostangel (AO3)

Synopsis: The Forces of Heaven and Hell have always assumed that the world would end. More specifically, they always assumed the world would precisely end on a Saturday evening, just a few days after the Antichrist’s birthday. The Armies are forming, the Four Horsemen have been drawn out, and the Antichrist is coming into his full power. Yet not everyone longs for Armageddon. Adam and Ronan - an Angel and Demon living in rural Virginia - most certainly don’t want it to; not when Earth has so many libations that they’ve come to enjoy. Besides, Armageddon without humans having a say in the matter wouldn’t be fair, would it? With their livelihoods and the lives of Mankind on the line, they plot to throw a wrench in the Divine Plan. It’d go far easier if anyone knew where the Antichrist was, though.

Team #3: We seek someone to sew sutures in the places where we’re torn

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: @blueseyforthesoul (tumblr)/kirani (AO3)

Artist: @thecorvidrotation (tumblr)

Synopsis: Gansey isn’t the half of his soulmate pair with a name, and Blue hasn’t said anything so he doesn’t think she has his name either. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a huge crush on the cute bassist of his roommate’s band. Shenanigans ensue.

Team #4: You Better Shape Up

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: stop_whining (AO3)

Artist: @attentionhoard (tumblr)

Synopsis: A Pynch fic inspired by the classic 1978 movie/musical Grease for TRC Big Bang 2020.

Team #6: Pranks and Pups!

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Instagram

Writer: @comfy-spot (tumblr)/RandyKorn (AO3)

Artist: manao.ri (instagram)

Synopsis: The end of winter break rolls around, and Ronan finds himself stuck in a depressive episode despite the miracle of having his friends all together once again. Blue and Henry bully him into a Platonic Date Night Extraordinaire (which isn’t so platonic on Henry’s part). There’s gelato, misdemeanors, dog piles, a duck, dance parties, and even a car chase - everything necessary to force one Ronan Lynch into admitting that he’s just as deserving of love and care as the rest of them.

Team #7: In gardens all wet with rain

Fanfic: AO3 | forestgeitart Art: Tumblr | purrsnicket Art: Tumblr

Writer: @magicienetreveur (tumblr)/hollyanneg (AO3)

Artist: @forestgeitart (tumblr)

Artist: @purrsnicket (tumblr)

Beta: @semicolonsandsimiles (tumblr)

Synopsis: In a land where magic is real, Ronan spends most of his time hiding from it in the palace gardens, where he’d once met a boy who could tell the future. There’s love letters, a masquerade ball, and an evil plot to be foiled.

Team #8: The Waiting Game

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: @inoctavo (tumblr)/inoctavo (AO3)

Artist: @lenaisanerd (tumblr)

Beta: @emjenenla (tumblr)

Synopsis: When all they can do is wait, Declan’s mind catastrophizes… then tries to plan for them. It’s a good recipe to make more problems when everyone’s gone around the emotional ringer. Featuring existential crises, denial, tough decisions, Declan meeting Opal for the first time, and Jordan painting Declan like one of her French girls.

Team #9: if love is just a game (then how come it’s no fun)

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: @toast-the-unknowing (tumblr)/shinealightonme (AO3)

Artist: @rroguess (tumblr)

Synopsis: Ronan probably shouldn’t have sworn at the stranger he runs into leaving Gansey’s favorite hipster coffee shop. Blue probably shouldn’t have tracked down Adam’s soulmate without his permission. But they did, and now all four of their lives are tangled up together, whether they like it or not.

Team #10: Strange as Angels

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: @skyermirth (tumblr)/skyermirth (AO3)

Artist: @squash1-squash2 (tumblr)

Beta: @galwaygremlin (tumblr)

Synopsis: Adam takes a job for the summer as Caretaker of the Barns, which local legend says is haunted. Adam soon finds out this is true when he meets the resident “ghost,” who isn’t very scary with his mohawk and grouchy demeanor but romantic heart. Falling in love with a ghost was not what Adam had planned for his summer. (Loosely based on the 1947 movie “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir”.)

Team #11: Dream Killer

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: @attentionhoard (tumblr)/mvsic_bxxks_stvdy (AO3)

Artist: @sinplaytheartist (tumblr)

Synopsis: Ronan Lynch is a man with extraordinary talents. If he can bring a living, breathing bird from a dream, what’s stopping him from bringing his best friend back from the grave? But some challenges are too great for one dreamer alone.

Team #12: Bread & Circuses

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Instagram

Writer: @galwaygremlin (tumblr)/okay_pretender (AO3)

Artist: crystaline_art (instagram)

Beta: @inoctavo (tumblr)

Team #14: Ag iarraidh forais i bhfodhomhain

Fanfic: AO3 | forestgeit Art: Tumblr | homunculiii Art: Tumblr

Writer: @semicolonsandsimiles (tumblr)/semicolonsandsimiles (AO3)

Artist: @forestgeitart (tumblr)

Artist: @homunculiii (tumblr)

Beta: @g-reywaren (tumblr)/applepi314 (AO3)

Synopsis: Adam is more surprised that he came to Ireland at all than he is to find a doorway to the Otherworld. When Persephone gives you cryptic predictions about your future, you’re almost certainly about to stumble into some magic. And for all his exterior bluster, Ronan seems almost relieved to have someone to visit Tír na nÓg with. But things turn complicated quickly when, during what was supposed to be a quick trip through the doorway, they encounter Ronan’s little brother - who is definitely human and definitely in New York. When Adam ends up back in Ireland long term, he finds himself increasingly entangled in the magic of the Lynch bookshop, the Lynch family lore, and one Lynch in particular.

Team #15: See You Later Alligator

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Instagram

Writer: @crostiina (tumblr)/crostiina (AO3)

Artist: fricklefracklefloof (instagram)

Beta: @creativefiend19 (tumblr)

Synopsis: “Adam.” he read out loud, because he didn’t know what else to do, because he was bad at conversation yet he definitely felt the need to say something.

He thought Adam was going to be even more annoyed and tell him off for being there and close and talking to him. He didn’t know why he did, maybe it was just that night messing with him, maybe it was just him never feeling right anywhere he went. Adam just shrugged.

“Told you I wasn’t Janine.”

Graduation year, Ronan Lynch is wasting his time with horrible friends and too many vices. Things change when he meets Adam Parrish, local (apparently) sane person and ambitious soul working the graveyard shift at a gas station’s market as he waits for acceptance letters to come. Somehow, they both happen to become the best part of the other person’s day.

Team #17: weekends are for the dogs

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: @royai (tumblr)/rizahawkaye (AO3)

Artist: @cheeriosnuggles (tumblr)

Synopsis: Ronan Lynch - fresh off the loss of his father, the truth of his Dreams - has so much to learn about himself, about Dreamers, about Niall, and about the black-coated wolf that tears its way through Henrietta.

Team #18: primavera

Fanfic: AO3 | Tumblr: Art

Writer: @manonblaccbeak (tumblr)/Imnotweirdjustwriting (AO3)

Artist: @gthechangeling (tumblr)

Beta: @pnrrish (tumblr)

Synopsis: the rebirth of Adam through art

OR: a renaissance AU featuring the gangsey

Team #19: trouble is (i don’t wanna let go)

Fanfic: AO3 | gouachemole Art: Tumblr | ladvy Art: Tumblr

Writer: @adverbialstarlight (tumblr)/adverbialstarlight (AO3)

Artist: @gouachemole (tumblr)

Artist: @ladvy (tumblr)

Beta: @violettfemme (tumblr)

Synopsis: It’s been two years since Henrietta’s infamous supervillain, Apothecary, disappeared from the streets and left the beloved hero Greywaren alone without his nemesis – and former secret lover. But now he’s back and determined, this time to team up and save the city from an even larger threat.

aka a pynch superhero au

Team #21: Love in the Time of Socialism

Fanfic: AO3 | Art 1: Tumblr | Art 2: Tumblr

Writer: @oldkingyounggod (tumblr)/aurumdalseni (AO3)

Artist: @effwit (tumblr)

Beta: @crostiina (tumblr)

Synopsis: This is a story about a magician with a terrible history. The death of Adam Parrish’s father after he leaves for college means a chance at closure with that part of his life, but he’s not on the journey alone. At his side is a king, whose loyalty never faltered, no matter how much the world threw at them, or how many times they couldn’t agree on how to live their lives. This is also the story of a dreamer, who loved his best friends so much that he didn’t dare risk losing them by asking for something they couldn’t give. So kisses that could have been became kisses that never were, and Ronan Lynch tells himself he’ll make his home a place they can return to. They’ll all come together again for Adam, even fierce little Blue Sargent, so he doesn’t have to face his past alone. And while he works at closing those doors, he’ll make his way into places where all the love Adam, Ronan and Gansey have built up over the years will finally have the space to bloom.

Team #22: we will raze this earth together

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: @teddylupin (tumblr)/perfect-porcelain (AO3)

Artist: @kojotei (tumblr)

Synopsis: Ronan is the heir to the Cabeswater throne, a mythical place that was thought to be lost to time. He is the only one of the late King Niall’s son to inherit the royal ability to shift into a dragon. He doesn’t want the throne. In his attempt to escape, he is captured and brought to the kingdom of Henrietta where the court magician, Adam is tasked with attempting to communicate with him, only Adam doesn’t know he has a human form. All Adam sees is the beautiful monstrosity that is Ronan.

Team #24: Heavy lies the head

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: @tinyarmedtrex (tumblr)/tinyarmedtrex (AO3)

Artist: @non-platonic-murphamy (tumblr)

Beta: @waywardsoul-s (tumblr)

Synopsis: Adam can’t stand the court magician, Ronan, but when his King sends the two of them on a quest Adam has no choice but to learn to work with the other man.

Team #25: A voice inside me sang your name

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: @maskingfragility (tumblr)/Fata_Morgana (AO3)

Artist: @pank0 (tumblr)

Beta: @campbraceyourself (tumblr)

Synopsis: Adam Parrish has recently gotten engaged, he works for a prestigious law firm in DC and he is about to be made partner. His life is millions miles away from the trailer park in Henrietta, he has accomplished all he has ever wanted, so when the call of an ancient, magical forest starts resonating inside him he is faced not just with his past, but with the possibility that his present is not what he really wants.

Team #27: Life is a Fucking Nightmare

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: @sterlynwrites (tumblr)/sterlynsilverrose (AO3)

Artist: @sinplaytheartist (tumblr)

Synopsis: We’ve All Read “Dream Thieves” at this point.

All the reader sees is the end of the nightmare of Joseph Kavinsky. But, what we don’t really see is exactly what leads up to that. This is an unapologetic look at Joseph Kavinsky and his daily life. It gives weight to the words:

“Life is a fucking nightmare.”

Team #31: The Creation of Adam

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: @pynches (tumblr)/clawsnbeak (AO3)

Artist: @purrsnicket (tumblr)

Beta: glam_reaper2 (AO3)

Synopsis: When Ronan Lynch enrolled in art school just to mess with his brother, he never thought he would actually be good at it. Now, with only a few months left before he is supposed to graduate, he has to turn in one of the biggest art pieces yet. Enter Adam Parrish, a poor student who wouldn’t say no to some extra money. When he saw an advertisement on Craigslist looking for a model to help with an art project, he didn’t hesitate to react. Working together seemed easy enough but there might be more between them than they bargained for.

Team #34: The Royal Treatment

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: @oldguybones (tumblr/Oldguybones (AO3)

Artist: @the-ronan-cycle (tumblr)

Synopsis: When Adam Parrish turned eighteen, he became the rightful heir to rule his home country of Henrietta. For years, he looked forward to taking over the nightmarish reign of his father and make the changes he wanted to see. But there was a huge problem. To officially hold the title, he first must wed and his foul mouthed, farm hand boyfriend, Ronan Lynch, knew nothing about royalty. Adam knew though, that there was no one better to rule by his side. So he must teach Ronan how to behave in the face of royalty without changing what he loved so dearly about him.

With time running out, will he be able to do that in time to gain the current King’s approval?

Team #38: and could you carry me through no man’s land

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: @mletart (tumblr)/mletart (AO3)

Artist: @wy-mackk (tumblr)

Beta: @stadamparrish (tumblr)

Synopsis: For The Raven Cycle 2020 Big Bang

In which Ronan Lynch gets himself into trouble with the High Council and Adam Parrish ends up taking Ronan on as his familiar. Adam learns the secrets of the Lynch family, and they both learn about magic and about each other. It goes a lot better than either of them would have expected at the start.

Team #39: Weirdos’ Voices

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: @flyde (tumblr)/parttimehuman (AO3)

Artist: @shamanda-lie (tumblr)

Synopsis: Without ever having seen the guy, Ronan is crushing hard on one of the construction workers renovating his building. Sitting against the door to his apartment, listening to the beautiful voice and oddly entertaining ramblings of a certain Ganseyboy, Ronan wonders what it would be like if they ever met. It happens when he least expects it…

Team #40: the first problem was putting us in charge of a kingdom

Fanfic: AO3 | Art: Tumblr

Writer: @bipolarronanlynchevangelist (tumblr)/elliptical (AO3)

Artist: @turqidoodles (tumblr)/Turq_I (AO3)

Synopsis: Ronan Lynch loses control of his magic, which is the catalyst for a lot of shit, because he’s the first proven user of chaos magic in… basically ever. Gansey’s trying to be a good king despite his fears that there may be no such thing. Adam Parrish works beside him, earning his terrifying reputation through psychic study and occasional gray morality. Blue Sargent can’t leave her home or she’ll sicken and die, and her wanderlust is driving her to seek less-than-sensible solutions. Noah Czerny knows a lot about healing, but he’s not omnipotent, and he’s a little tired of being asked to clean up everyone else’s messes. Declan Lynch doesn’t trust the crown. He especially doesn’t trust the crown with his little brother. Mysteriously, all of this leads to rather a lot of conflict.

#the raven cycle #call down the hawk #trc #cdth #trc big bang 2020 #fic rec #bang masterpost

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thereisonlyoneoption · 4 years

Text

Maggie Stiefvater~Rant YA edition pt.2

I know, I know that I had to make a part about world-building but I’m pissed, I failed my exam I am at my friend house and it’s Fourth of July so I must do this.

Joseph Kavinsky.

First of all I don’t condemn his actions and yes, you can like a character but don’t agree with their actions.

My journey with The Dream Thieves was rocky, like really rocky. It was worse than The Raven Boys, I felt psychical pain while reading this one but there was only one good thing that help get through it AND IT WAS KAVINSKY.

From the first scene I liked him, I was intrigued by him and I was curious why Gangsey hates him so much. I mean what M*ggie give us are just rumours, that's when I asked myself “Why such a hate? What did he do to them?”.

And then the yo mama jokes, priceless by the way. Okay, maybe my sense humour sucks but let me tell you in polish translation “twoja stara” is golden I laughed for several minutes.

But the thing went down pretty quickly, like my face went from a happy to grim in a second and stayed that way while reading this, just to cry at the end. After that it was just anger and to this day I’m angry at M*ggie for what she did.

Lets start from beginning.

1. Kavinsky-Description

The first time we see Kavinsky it’s in the chapter 3 where we got rumours about him:

“Of course it was Joseph Kavinsky, fellow Aglionby Academy student and Henrietta’s most notorious recreational forger. Kavinsky’s infamous Mitsubishi Evo was a thing of boyish beauty, moon-white with a voracious black mouth of a grille and an immense splattered graphic of a knife on either side of the body. The Mitsubishi had just been released from a month-long stint in the police impound. The judge had told him that if he was caught racing again, they’d crush the Mitsubishi and make him watch, like they did to the rich punks’ street racers out in California. Rumor had it Kavinsky had laughed and told the judge he’d never get pulled over again. He probably wouldn’t. Rumor had it Kavinsky’s father had bought off Henrietta’s sheriff. To celebrate the Mitsubishi’s release from impound, Kavinsky had just put three coats of anti-laser paint on the headlights and bought himself a new radar detector.“

Right from the bat, characters expressed disdain of him:

“I hate that prick,” Adam said.

Then we get the “description” of him: white sunglasses, golden chain, which already is kinda lacking but then we get the infamous “refugee face”

“He had a refugee’s face, hollow-eyed and innocent.“

Okay okay, so like it wasn't already offensive, we learn later that he’s Bulgarian and as a person also from Slavic group, this description just looks bad and leaves bad taste in my mouth, because I'm fed up with Americans view of Slavs like we are all simple people, still in communist era somewhere in the Europe, who came to America to steal low income jobs.

On the other hand, how does “refugee face” looks like? Yeah, we get the line “hollow-eyed and innocent“ but it still feels offensive to Slavic group.

Luckily, in my translation it was changed to “runaway’s face” which holds the same idea but it isn't offensive and fits Kavinsky’s character better.

“There was nothing about Kavinsky that wasn’t despicable”

Just... ugh why they hate him so much, I asked myself back then but I didn't know that from this point, all went down hill.

“He was unmistakable: the sort of raven boy who was clearly an import from elsewhere.“

Okay first of all, you can import things, not actual people Blue. Second of all, combining this with “refugee face” it made me so angry like M*ggie, why can’t you describe Kavinsky normally without possibly offending half of Europe. He is human, not your new brand German car.

After that we get the rest of description “Like many of the other raven boys, he sported massive sunglasses, spiked hair, a small earring, a chain around his neck, and a white tank top.“ and that’s it. It’s all we get. There might be some things missing, like hair colour but we can forgive that.

2. Backstory

In M*ggie’s now deleted tumblr, she once wrote:

"Kavinsky has a very logical backstory that leads him to this place.”

And what did we know about Kavinsky? Practically, nothing. He’s a son of a Bulgarian mobster from New Jersey, he’s rumoured to kill his father, he’s mother is a drug-addict, he’s rich, Prokopenko is his favourite forgery and he got away with replacing him and possibly his dad. It gives the idea to what shaped him as a person but it doesn’t explained everything, like if he killed his dad, why wasn’t it? How did it ended up with him replacing Prokopenko? Why he is his favourite forgery?

But okay M*ggie say what you want but I and my friend made better backstory for him in ten minutes (like it wasn’t hard really).

3. ”We matter”

“Closing his eyes, Gansey leaned his head back on his seat, chin tilted up, throat green in the dash lights. There was still an unsafe sort of smile about his mouth — what a torment the possibility in that smile was — and he said, “There was never a time when that could’ve been you and me. You know the difference between us and Kavinsky? We matter.“

That said Gansey, the character we are supposed to like, about the kid who is not only his age but also drug addicted and possibly abused. I was furious at him for saying that because who k*rwa he is to say things like that. Is he some frigging higher being to judge someone like that?

And he was smiling while saying that? What an.. and nobody called him out on that?! It only gives the reader the idea that people like Kavinsky don’t matter and to those who relate to him that they don’t matter.

And Blue, who again made me want to throw my phone, later in the book asked literal a hitman, who offered to go to “talk” with him to “make him feel worthless” while doing it.

It’s the next example when I felt the main characters are lacking a basic human empathy, like again he is just a kid not “H*tler” like Ronan compare him to.

4. That scene

That f*king scene, we all know about.”R*pe of Ronan” as stans like to call it.

I heard the reaction of the fans to this scene even before reading this books. Of course, I was anticipating this scene and when it came:

“After a moment, he heard the hood groan as Kavinsky leaned over him. Then he felt the ridged callus of a finger drag slowly over the skin on his back. A slow arc between his shoulder blades, drawing the pattern of his tattoo. Then sliding down his spine, tensing every muscle it moved over.

But when his eyes slitted, battling sleep, Kavinsky was just doing another line of coke off the roof, body stretched over the windshield. He might have imagined it. What was real?“

I was baffled, because its bad but its nothing like fans making to be. All Kavinsky does is drag his finger on Ronan’s back tattoo, while he is falling asleep but afterwards Ronan said he doesn’t know, if it was even real, so the reader can’t tell if it was. Somebody would argue, that is a molestation but once again, we don’t know if it was real. Maybe if we got K’s PoV we could get information about this situation but now we are left in the dark what really happened that night.

And then, there is “Consent is overrated” scene

This is one of the main argument of stans preaching that K is a r*pist. Yes, that sounds horrible, we don’t have to argue about that but people missed the context of situation in which it was said.

“Ronan replied, “Not such a thief tonight.”

“Some nights,” Kavinsky said, all teeth, “you just take it. Consent is overrated.”“

Ronan and Kavinsky are referring to pulling things out of dreams and how Kavinsky is doing it aka not asking permission to take them out, unlike Ronan. But without this context, the world “consent” is mainly associated with one thing. You know what...

The bottom line is that, if we got K’s PoV, it would shine a light on his intentions and motivations to say and possibly do all of this. We can only thanks the author for that.

5. Relationship with Ronan Lynch

Maybe that will sound scandalous but I don’t think Kavinsky loved Ronan. All of their interaction seem more like obsession to me and after the dreaming of Camaro, it seem desperate.

At the beginning, after main characters expressed disdain of K, only Ronan thought something different:

“Ronan knew he ought to hate him, too.“

And I thought “Okay maybe Ronan know more about him than the rest” but as the chapters went, I wanted the end of it all.

It was toxic. I know, I know but I was hoping for a least little glimpses of possible friendship. Instead of that, I got throwing over cars, punching and exploitation between them. With Kavinsky saving Ronan from the night horror (which fans forget about in their rants how bad K is) and helping Ronan dreaming a new Camaro, I expect at least some decency? gratefulness?? at Ronan side, because nobody forced Kavinsky to do this but when Ronan got what he wanted he just peace out?! Like Kavinsky was doing all of this as a favour?

“He rolled down the window. “I’m going.” For a moment, Kavinsky’s face was perfectly blank, and then Kavinsky flickered back onto it. He said, “You’re shitting me.” “I’ll send flowers.” Ronan revved the engine. Exhaust and dust swirled in a wild torment behind the Camaro. It coughed at twenty-eight-hundred rpm. Just like the Pig. Everything was back the way it was. “Running back to your master?” “This was fun,” Ronan said. “Time for big-boy games now, though.”

And

““I never lie,” Ronan said. He frowned disbelievingly. This felt like a more bizarre scenario than anything that had happened to this point. “Wait. You thought — it was never gonna be you and me. Is that what you thought?”“

And what was Kavinsky’s reaction after he was “used” by Ronan without even a thank you?

“Kavinsky made a gun of his thumb and finger and put it to Ronan’s temple. “Bang,” he said softly, withdrawing the fake gun. “See you on the streets.”“

Not anger but disbelief about what just happened and then the “he said softly“ just seems sad to me. He got used by the man he, de facto, wanted to befriend. He for sure felt cheated and used but the next thing what he does seems just OOC for me. He kidnapped Matthew, Ronan’s younger brother, to force him to come to the Fourth of July party. Before it looked like he wanted Ronan just to have a fun but after the Camaro something broke in him. But once again, it only my interpretation, because K is the only TRC antagonist that doesn’t get PoV, so I can wonder, what was going on in his head.

I’m tired of this, because most of the things could be explained, if we got his PoV, because without it his actions seems random.

After the text “bring something fun to fourth of july or we’ll see which pill works the best on your brother“, Ronan called K demanding where is Matthew and K responded:

“Ronan demanded, “Where is he?” “You know, I asked nice the first few times. Are you coming to Fourth? Are you coming? Are you coming? Here, have a motherfucking car. Are you coming? You made it ugly. Bring something impressive tonight.”“

It doesn’t sounds that evil to me more like desperate (repetition of “are you coming”) and hurting (”you made it ugly”). It made me feel more curious about what was going in his head and what lead him to kidnapping more than being angry at him for kidnapping Matthew.

Kavinsky was looking someone like Ronan, to share problems and to destroy themselves together. And Ronan was the closest thing to it, dreamer and all. He was looking for connection but in the end, Ronan didn’t want anything to do with him and that ended in tragedy.

6. Fourth of July

Ah yes, the main reason why I’m writing this post. We know how this goes. Gangsey arrives at party. Ronan demands where is his brother. Ronan follow K into a dream.

"Kavinsky laughed the word. "Reality! Reality's what other people dream for you."

"Reality's where other people are," Ronan replied. He stretched out his arms. "What's here, K? Nothing! No one!"

"Just us."

There was a heavy understanding in that statement, amplified by the dream. I know what you are, Kavinsky had said. "That's not enough," Ronan replied."

One again K got rejected and it was told to him he "wasn't enough" Okay, Ronan doesn't own him anything but what happened next is more fucked up

Kavinsky dreams fire dragon, Ronan night horror. They fight. Gangsey search for Matthew.

Ronan demands K to tell him where is Matthew and K just said “He’s all yours! You missed my point, man. All I wanted was this —”“ while gesturing at their creations and ONCE AGAIN I REPEAT ONCE AGAIN we are not sure what K meant: dreaming together? fighting? One chapter from his PoV couldn’t hurt Maggie you know?

Matthew got rescued, Ronan shielded him from upcoming dragon then this:

"He shouted to Kavinsky, ”Get down!”

But Kavinsky didn’t look away from the creatures. He said,”The world’s a nightmare”.

Ronan once again shouted to him but Kavinsky didn’t answered and let the dragon to kill him.

“A second later, the fire dragon exploded into Kavinsky. It went straight through him, around him, flame around an object. Kavinsky fell. Not as if he was struck, though. Just like when he’d taken the green pill. He crumpled to his knees and then slumped gracelessly off the car.“

And we know K is dead, because both the dragon and Prokopenko fall asleep.

And that’s all and what was all for? Because they thought he was draining the ley lines (but Adam fixing the lines seems to do the trick) and because Ronan didn't want to come to Fourth of July. After that comes nothing. No reaction from the cast and the dream pack who supposedly were his friends (In later book Jiang talks to Ronan like nothing happened) there is no funeral of which we know and the town is silent. Like K never existed.

What kind of message this sends to a reader? That if you are like Kavinsky in any way nobody will mind if you are gone. You are not even worthless to remember. On one podcast M*ggie said she don’t want to be educational in her books and that’s f*cked up because she is writing YA, young people who are easily influenced and after reading how K is treated the majority will close the book with belief that people like K don’t deserve help and they are goners not worthy of redemption.

While in the same book Gray Man, adult hitman who killed people on pages, was hunting down Ronan, relieved to be murderer behind a Niall's death, beat up and threaten Declan with a gun to tell him where the Greywaren was not only forgiven by everyone (including Ronan) but got redemption arc and love interest. Let me repeat adult man, literal a hitman gets redemption arc but not mentally ill kid. Okay Margaret what the f*ck was that. Where is the logic, where is the lamb sauce?! Does she knows how her writing can influence young people? And it seems most of the fans agree with her.

Conclusion

Joseph Kavinsky was handled terribly through the whole book. With main cast hating him from the get-go. Narration that tried to make him the great evil (with some fans of TRC calling him the worst villain) and after the book got published the fans and the author themself further demonised him, 17 year old boy with a drug addiction, mental illness and with possible history of abuse.

I can only shake my head every time, I see someone calling him the devil. What Kavisnky needed was rehab and therapy, not death! If she wanted to find solution to stop him from dreaming, why couldn't she just moved him outside of Henrietta or Virginia, not lead him to commit s*icide and public s*icide mind you. He was a bad person but nobody deserved to die like this.

To end this post (I wrote this post so long that in my country is no longer Fourth of July), I still to this day think about Kavinsky and what would happened, if the author didn't choose the easy way to "get rid of him". And do not tell me, it was impossible to end it differently, because it was possible. Ronan just grabbing him by the shirt and pulling him off the car. Sending him to a rehab or just talking with him, instead of assuming from the start, that he wouldn't listen. His only crimes were, he needed help and he wouldn't listen to Gangsey telling him what to do.

#anti maggie stiefvater #joseph kavinsky #anti the raven cycle #anti trc #he deserved better

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pynchfic · 4 years

Note

Hello! Would you mind recommending fics where people react to the gangsey/pynch? Specifically what normal people think of Adam at college would be fantastic! Thank you!

Hello! I have split the following recs into categories so that it makes more sense how they are related to your ask! Sorry if there is any confusion! I don’t have any that are to your specifics of “what normal people think of Adam”, but this is covered in Call Down The Hawk!!

Featuring Outside Perspectives of Gangsey

you’re ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece by Klavier (M | 11148 | 3/3)

It wasn’t that Adam listened to the comments from other Aglionby boys about “the brain and the brawn” or took any of their gold-plated opinions into account.

It was the fearless, almost insubordinate, nature of Ronan’s rolled up sleeves. Two handprints encircled his wrists, a deep violet, darker than any mark Adam had ever seen. Gansey sported a matching color on both palms, as if he’d dipped them completely in paint.

Featuring Outside/Gangsey Perspectives of Pynch

Heavenly Wine and Roses by orphan_account (M | 4484 | 1/1)

Gansey has everything under control.

Never Have I Ever by lazarusthefirst (M | 5974 | 1/1)

’Noah what did you call them last week?’ Ronan asked, leaning over. ‘When you were talking about how feisty Gansey gets around Blue?’

Noah grinned. ‘Oh yeah - Salt and Pepper.’

Adam and Ronan laughed as Gansey rolled his eyes and Blue threw a bottlecap at Noah. ‘I don’t know what you’re laughing about,’ she said to Adam. ‘He calls you two Sugar and Spice.’

Ronan pointed to himself as Adam blushed. ‘I’m sugar, right?’

Part 6 of the Five dumb peas in a dumb pod series

These Hands Are Tied by liwellen (T | 1735 | 1/1)

“At first, I thought Gansey and I were doing something wrong. Then I realized that it wasn’t our problem at all! It’s you two. You can be jerks but you’re always touching, and kissing, and doing that annoying telepathic thing.” She scrunched her nose. “It’s kind of disgusting.”

Adam felt his face burn and immediately said, “That’s not true. We don’t- get off me, Lynch.” He pushed at Ronan who had been resting his head on his thigh this whole time.

Noah decided to pipe in. “Like she said. Disgusting.”

That was what made Adam and Ronan determined to prove that they could keep their damn hands to themselves.

don’t make a shadow of yourself by softambrollins (T | 1567 | 1/1)

They’re just filling up the space, with noise and words and insults that never quite hit their mark but just glance off of the walls or each other, hoping it’s enough.

Blue and Gansey happen to walk in just as he says the one thing that lands right where it was supposed to go, where he never intended it to go.

with nothing to lose, will you be my honey by gravinnen (G | 3905 | 1/1)

Gansey offers to help Ronan out with his feelings for Adam and he is being very subtle about it.

-Sheila

#answered #anonymous #author: gravinnen #author: softambrollins #author: liwellen #author: lazarusthefirst #author: klavier #author: orphanaccount #rated g #rated t #rated m #1k to 5k #5k to 10k #10k to 15k #single chapter #multiple chapters

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fleurdehivers · 6 years

Text

who’s the true protagonist of trc?

okay, this is inspired by an old deleted post by, and a later conversation with @lynchlesbian about the “adam parrish and his band of merry men” line by the gray man, and us wondering what the fandom consensus is on who the real protagonist of the series is and why. i think mstief did a decent job of putting alll of them on the same level narratively speaking, or at least giving them the same amount of space, so a case could probably be made for all four characters and no option would be wrong a priori.

i’ll put the rest under the cut, because this is going to be a little long.

i still wanted to try and break this down with a more thorough analysis. so, i think we should start by the definition of what a protagonist is: the term comes from ancient greek drama and literally means “first actor”, in the sense that the protagonist was literally the character that made the first appearance on the stage and was the focal point of the story. i consulted a number of websites and they all seem to agree on the fact that for most of history and in most cases a protagonist is also the hero, simply defined as the character we hope to see “win”, and the main character of the story. but sometimes the three do not coincide, and there begin the problems, because if they’re not one and the same we need to define separately what a protagonist and a main character are. and academia apparently hasn’t got a single and unanimous outlook on the matter, which makes things a little confusing.

the main character is easier to classify:

it is either the character from whose perspective the story is written (sometimes this is also called the “point-of-view” character – in this instance gansey, blue, adam and ronan are all unequivocally main characters)

or simply the character with the most screen time (again, all four are main characters)

but, as defined in this article, usually a main character is also a character who experiences inner conflicts, and how said character resolves those conflicts often determines how the external conflict is resolved; to avoid confusion, i will call this case that of a “central character”

the protagonist is where things get muddier:

it is the person who opposes the antagonist (this is easy, they’re all protagonists again, save for tdt maybe, where ronan is the protagonist and the other are all co-protagonists)

it is, mainly, the character who is the primary pursuer of the story goal, which affects or involves most of the characters and its the source of external conflict; often the protagonist tries to persuade the other character to follow them in pursuing the goal

it can be the person who drives the plot, the one who makes decisions, who makes things happen and creates action; one writer suggested here that greg, the father of the family, is the protagonist of little miss sunshine because he drives the story forward by driving the car. i don’t necessarily agree with this interpretation, it feels somewhat simplistic, but there you go

it’s also a character that undergoes change, emotional, intellectual and/or spiritual growth, and travels from a point a to a point b, either literally or figuratively; at the end of the story they’re often wiser, more nuanced, better or just changed people

now that we have our definitions, we can start applying them to the characters.

let’s start by the most obvious one, i.e. gansey. if you want my straightforward opinion, gansey is the protagonist of the story; it’s not the answer my heart wants to give, but it’s the one that makes most sense to me. all characters are involved in the main plot, but gansey is the one clear pursuer of the story goal and the focal point of the story. whilst reading, the questions we’re supposed to ask ourselves are, will he find his dead welsh king? will he survive? why was he brought back to life the first time anyway? and, of course, he is the unspoken leader of the gangsey. and when someone challenges that leadership, he acts hurt and offended, like for the most part of tdt where he shuts adam out and feels betrayed by him. actually, in his words, the betrayal feels worse than if it had come from ronan, because evidently gansey wasn’t expecting adam of all people to discuss his central role in their quest. but. BUT. as per our precedent definitions, the protagonist is supposed to change and grow as the story progresses and this doesn’t seem to be gansey’s case. in fact, one could almost say that his main character flaw is his inability to change. he starts at one point in the story and he finishes in the exact same spot. the narrative denies him the possibility to become a better person and rectify his mistakes. and he’s also not always, perhaps not for the most part, the person driving the plot forward, making decisions and creating action.

in fact, that role could be fulfilled by adam or ronan. adam is the first character to create action, because a) he’s the one asking blue out and therefore making their fates intertwine, and b) he’s the one who convinces gansey to go to the psychics about glendower. he also jumpstarts the narrative by waking the ley line, thus setting the magic element in motion. he makes a bargain with cabeswater and becomes the link between the boys and the forest; he painfully learns how to communicate with this sentient entity and he reshapes his future by choosing another tarot card at the table; he becomes the magician, he comes up with the plan to blackmail greenmantle, he finds out how to wake the animals in the valley of skeletons, which later allows blue fo find her mother; he learns to scry to help ronan with his dreams; he’s the one suggesting to ask cabeswater to sacrifice itself for gansey and he’s pivotal in the process or reviving him teaching cabeswater about humanity. person driving the plot? check. he also undergoes a lot of personal change. he frees himself from his abusive household environment, he cuts ties with his family and goes on to live alone and support himself financially; he grows so much as a person, learning to count more on his friends, to let go of his pride, to control his anger, even when he has every right to be angry, and to not vent it out on others, to let himself feel things. so, character who undergoes personal growth? check. but he admittedly isn’t the focus of the overall story, the role is still gansey’s.

a similar argument could be made for ronan. he is the dreamer, he manifests cabeswater, he’s a main driving force of the entire story. as with adam, he changes a lot from the beginning to the end of the books: he starts out by being this ever-angry boy, all sharpness and edges because he’s grieving and traumatised but slowly begins to heal, to find some kind of closure with his father; to free himself from his self-hatred, to accept himself the way he his; he learns to control his dreams and to free himself from kavinsky’s toxic influence; he becomes a better friend to blue and lets himself love his crush, he loses his mother in a horrifying way but he’s there again for his friend shortly after; he becomes a parental figure for opal. so we find ourselves again in front of a character who carries the story forward and has a notable self-growth throughout it. at this point, one could be tempted to say he’s the true protagonist because there’s a novel in the series entirely devoted to him, but it’s exactly his role in tdt that makes me reject this idea. he’s a fundamental part of a piece of the story, a link between the beginning and the later portions of it, the effective protagonist of tdt; but tdt feels too much like a kind of stand-alone book inside the series, and yet again, the rest of the story doesn’t revolve around ronan, though he is, as much as adam, an impossibly central character in a book with four main characters.

blue is, instead, clearly the decoy protagonist: the premise and the first chapters of the series make it look like she’ll be the only main character and the hero of her own story, but going forward she kind of fades into the background, to tumble out of it in bllb, to go back there in trk. she has too few relevant moments by herself, and most of them are concentrated in the first half of trb and the ending chapters of bllb, to be considered a fitting candidate for protagonist role. and as with gansey, she just doesn’t grow that much as the story goes on. which, if you ask me, is a pity because not only she was a very interesting character, she also was the only female character in the main ensemble cast. but, alas, we had to see her fulfill her destiny and kill and one true love with a kiss. me was hoping for a plot twist at the end, but of course that wasn’t my destiny as a reader.

so, to sum things up, this is how i view things: gansey is the de facto protagonist of the story, because he’s the clear focal point of it. but remember point three in the main character definitions? i’d say adam and ronan are the most central characters in the novels, those whose internal conflicts determine how the external conflicts are resolved. and they’re both gansey’s contenders as protagonists. although, i also think that ronan feels comfortable in a defiled position and is quite happy to follow gansey in most occasions, whereas adam openly challenges gansey’s leadership and decisions, and makes his own accordingly. so i get where mr. gray takes his idea of “adam and his band of merry men” and it makes perfect sense to me that he would think that way for what had been his involvement in the story. and i have to say, my heart thoroughly agrees with mr. gray. just this once.

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womantryingtoexist · 6 years

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She Is The Raven Boy

The Raven Cycle but with a She Is The Man plot twist. Blue get`s a chance to go to Agilonby. Calla pulled a few strings for her, but didn`t tell her that the administration just thinks that Blue is a Boy Name(TM). So, Blue has to dress up as a guy.

And though she is short, she somehow manages to be pretty convincing. And a bit of an asshole. Blue without the social rules for women, is a Blue let out of prison. She tries to educate the guys on how to treat woman and it somewhat backfires: Everyone thinks she is the greatest womanizer ever.

The rest of the Gangsey meets her during Latin. And Adam knows he is bi, so there is no surprise when he finds her attractive. But he does not ask her for a date, because knowing and acting on it, are two completely different things.

Gansey is just like “Huh, I am a Bisexual, apparently” and just moves on. While trying to land a date with her. Which makes Adam and Ronan prissy. Because Adam likes Blue, and Ronan is one jealous ass.

Ronan is also the only one realizing that something is weird with that Blue fella. So, he tries snooping around but is so bad at it, that he never finds anything useful. But his suspicion is only relieved, when Blue finally tells them.

And she does after one or two adventures together. Ronan is pissed, Adam asks her out and Gansey is like “Not Bisexual?”. But after a few weeks everything is back to normal. And she is somehow one of “the boys”.

Until Henry. Henry Cheng, who stands in front of her and asks: “Would you like to become part of the divers student association (DSA) of Aglionby Academy? I have the feeling that there is so much that you could bring to the table, right, Blue?”

#trc #the raven cycle #she is the man #she is the man au #blue sargent #adam parrish #ronan lynch #richard gansey iii #henry cheng #sorry no noah in this #he did not fit #but he is rememberd #prompt #funny #headcanon #writing

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dcpravities · 5 years

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was that miles heizer? oh no no, that was just noah czerny, a canon character from the raven cycle. they are twenty four years old and are aware that they are not actually from washington dc. too bad they can’t stray from this city for long.

how long has your character been here

probably less than a day, because it’s best to make things as chaotic and confusing as possible

what is your character’s job

nothing at this point, but in time he’ll probably take some classes at one of the schools around here, maybe get some sort of job eventually. more than likely, he’s not in a big rush to do any of those just yet.

where has your character been pulled from in their fandom

noah remembers everything in canon.

has any magic affected your character

considering that noah was a ghost through all of canon, the magic has obviously played a big part in bringing him back from the dead - which is something he’s going to be spending some time dealing with.

and any other information you might find useful for us and the other members to know!!

- noah attended aglionby academy several years before gansey, ronan and adam did. it was during this point in time that his best friend at the time, barrington whelks, had lost all of his money and was looking to for some way to regain it or gain some sort of power. barrington hoped to awaken the ley lines in henrietta, which noah was willing to help him with. however, barrington eventually found out that to awaken the ley line he’d need to make a ritual sacrifice - at this point, he murdered noah. noah’s death on the ley lines happened at the same time that gansey was also about to die on the ley lines, and so gansey managed to survive while noah did not. following this, noah remained as a ghost in henrietta, until he eventually met the rest of the gangsey and befriended them. he lived with gansey and ronan in monmouth. - he’s a shy and introverted person, something that occurred after his death. while he was regarded as energetic and cheerful before he was killed, he took on a more sensitive and withdrawn nature after. ultimately, he is someone who’s extremely loyal, as well as affectionate. he still holds a lot of unresolved emotions around his death and how it happened at the hands of someone who had called him their best friend. - he managed to be seen by the other by drawing energy from them, and spent the majority of this period trying to connect with his family and let them know what had happened. as the series progressed, though, his soul began to decay, essentially signifying that he no longer had any sort of attachment to this world anymore. he eventually ceases to exist completely by the end of the series.

#hw: intro #introduction — noah.#death tw #murder tw

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sophygurl · 6 years

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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??

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off-in-the-moors · 4 years

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TRC rewrite: Main characters

Why? Because The Raven Cycle is a mess. From the setting, through characters and to the plot, everything is a mess on a foundations of good ideas. It feels like Margaret took three to four different drafts, stitched them together and switched around events, e.g. things that should be in book 1 are in book 3, etc.

So, here is my attempted to rewrite the Gangsey.

Blue

curly, damaged, black hair kept short; brown eyes and light brown skin

short and stocky, with a big eyes; untamed, arched eyebrows; and round nose

1/4 black, 3/4 white (Maura is 1/2 black, and Artemus is welsh)

her father, Artemus, was a history professor, focusing on British Isle (especially Wales)

when she was 14, her father's ghost appeared on Saint Mark's Eve, he suddenly died few months, leaving Blue devastated

was very close with her dad, didn't forgive her mother for not trying to save Artemus

straightens and clips down her hair to make it resemble hers dad's

owns a pink switch blade, which was once red, she stole from her father's stuff, uses it mostly to cut plants

knows a lot about plants, helps cultivated and collect them for the family business

interested in and actively looks for paranormal (magic, cryptids, you name it), interest seeded by her parents

went to public school, but after middle school was pulled out for homeschooling

works two part-time jobs, as a waitress at Nino's and a dog-walker, to have her own money

a psychic but her power makes it impossible to work as one

makes and remakes her own clothes, isn't good at it but she loves it

loves knitting sweaters for her friends and family

wears colorful, often clashing outfits with a lots of accessories

loves color blue, always has something blue in her outfit, even if only as an accent color

vegetarian

knows Adam from middle school, keeps warm relations with him (introduced her to his friends)

spends her Sundays with her family (e.g. hitch-hiking with her mother, helping with Calla, making sweater and clothes with Persephone, painting nails with Orla)

know few phrases in Estonian, thanks to Persephone

opinioned, independent and bold

environmentalist

Gansey

tousled, always preciously styled, brown hair; dark brown eyes, light skin

average but quite square built (looks stiff), straight nose, shadows and bags under eyes, often has pieces of mint leaves stuck it teeth

the shortest guy of the Gangsey

born with a silver spoon in his mouth

at ten, almost died from wasp stinks but survived thanks to "Glendower", obsessed with finding him ever since

insomniac, his grands and health suffers from it

was in the rowing team, until he slept through training and hit team-mate with a oar

has the power to commend people, but it's weak

loves mint-flavor things, borders on obsession

owns five different types of mint plants (Ronan named them)

makes mistakes in his research and normal day to day actions from lack of sleep, needs help of others

his mom buys him clothes

doesn't understand the value of money, mostly throws it around and leads people with no need to return it

needs glasses but often losses them (even worse with contacts), in the beginning of the story he's on his seventh pair

doesn't have friends outside the "Gangsey"

awkward about feelings and crushes, can't deal with them

has slit ADHD, needs to do something with his hands

perfectionist, fixes mistakes of others, brushes problems off

good at social interactions but horrible at maintaining relationships

after his grands suffered too much and his search for Glendower effected his school life, his parents cut him off from finances as a punishment

with Adam's help, found a job as a cashier at a grocery store, actually loves it

needs time to remember people's names

Ronan

curly, dark brown (almost black) hair, always shaven; blue eyes, pale skin (burns easily)

tall (tallest of the Gangsey) and quite muscular, angular face, narrow eyes, multiple scars on arms and few on face (oddly proud of them)

he's a copy of his own father, Niall Lynch (looks like a younger version of him)

shaved his head and got tattoos, after he discovered he's a copy, to resemble Niall as little as possible

dresses in what his father would never wear

has only one real tattoo, a Celtic cross on the back of his neck base, the rest of his back is dreamt up

the dream tattoo always changes, reflecting Ronan's mental/emotional state, but always has motifs of wings/feathers and branches twisting into Celtic knots

tried to stop dreaming up stuff multiple times, but it caused him headache and nausea, eventually ending in physical harm, went the dream "gets out"

confused about who or what he is

self-destructive, has no regards for his own safety

has a very strain relationship with Declan, envies his "realness"

vegan, loves animals and hates people who harm them

loves speed and racing, oddly proud of his speeding-tickets

believes for a long time, only Kavinsky understands him, but their "friendship" is complicated

doesn't allow anyone to touch Chainsaw (dream creatures are very personal to a dreamer)

tries to figure out what HE likes, and find his OWN path (even if it means craving it out)

touched starved

loves nature, can spend hours outside just sitting and thinking

acts and speaks before thinking, got himself in trouble for that many times (gets physical quiet often)

helps in the family "dream trade" business, doesn't want any of his creations near him, Chainsaw is the only exception

feels drawn to Cabeswaters, but he preferably would just burn it

knows Irish, speaks it when frustrated

before Niall's death, trained tennis and played on bagpipes (uilleann pipes), but stopped after his father's murder hates boxing

Adam

short, self-cut, light red-ish brown hair; grey eyes, tan skin with a lot of moles and freckles

skinny, deep-set eyes and a downturned lips

has only a backpack of his own stuff and a bike

deals with Gansey's antics only for a chance to escape his father and his living situation

lives with Gansey, Ronan and Noah in Monmouth

prioritises his education over his friendship with "Gangsey"

very frugal, keeps a "change jar"

mostly wears his wash-out Coca-Cola t-shirt, he bought with his first pay

the most sceptical about magic, still very cautious of it

hates loud sounds and physical contact

hates taking money from people and having money spend on him, but he knows he needs it

has three part-time jobs, including his favourite at the garage

loves cars, dreams about buying his own one day

afraid of heights and flying, childhood trauma

opportunist

highly values his independence

never refuses food

sacrificed his "hands and eyes" to Cabeswater, not only to wake the Ley Lines but also to escape his former life for good, seeing it as the only way (partly tricked by the forest)

deaf on the left ear but hears Cabeswater whispering to him through it

actively "fights" with Cabeswater for control (his way or the high way)

owns a old Nokia phone, only bought it to stay in contact with Gansey knows how to sew and dress a wound

Noah

messy, pale blond hair; light blue eyes, pale skin with a dark spot on the left side of his face

faded and lean; small, lively eye; bright, wide smile

kept him pretty much the same, but also add

sarcastic with a dry (and sometimes dark) sense of humor

"I'm the oldest one, so you should listen to me sometimes."

his Aglionby uniform always looks crinkled and dirty

doesn't remember most of his "living life"

gets his memories back from seeing/visiting people/places he knew

his emotional state effects his corporal form, e.g. strong negative emoticons make him less visible

music helps him stay visible

still loves Blink-182 (Ronan pirated him all their albums, including those he missed)

misses skateboarding, swimming, spending time with his old friends and family, and filling the weather

doesn't remember his death, only the pain

likes to wander around Henrietta

likes anything glitter, reminds him of his sisters

gave Adam permission to take his old Mustang, "If you can bring it to live, Parrish."

his disappearance is still a talked subject in Aglionby

sometimes mumbles or swears something no one understand, took Gangsey time to figured out it was polish

+ Bonus

Chainsaw

Ronan's first dream creature (or at the time Ronan believes so)

quite small for a raven

senses Ronan's emotions, always tries to comfort him by burying into his neck or "grooming" him

can speak single works but they sound very corrupted, e.g. "kerah" is a corrupted version of "cara" (irish for "friend")

at the beginning called Ronan Greywaren, but with time it change to "creātor" (creator), "somniator" (dreamer) and finally "cara" (friend), reflecting Ronan's own view of himself

likes to collect and bring Ronan small things, e.g. pen caps, leaves or pieces of newspapers

gets close only to people Ronan likes and/or trusts

If you have any questions or opinions to share, please send me an ask.

Thank you, for your attention :)

#the raven cycle #TRC #anti raven cycle #anti trc #anti maggie stiefvater #trc rewrite #Richard Campbell Gansey III #blue sargent #adam parrish #ronan lynch #noah czerny

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badacts · 6 years

Text

whither shall i follow

this is the complete piece i wrote for @thezinezone ‘s STRANGE CONSTELLATIONS, a trc zine all about the gangsey. i loved writing for it - keeping under the max word count was the hardest part! the final zine is beautiful so consider getting a copy and supporting a great cause

It’s Gansey’s yearning for ostensibly normal post-graduation rites of passage that’s to blame. Well, that, and Henry’s need to encourage every bad idea any of them have ever had.

“You’re already going on a road trip,” Ronan bitches, slinging an oddly malformed duffle bag into the trunk of his car. “This is a waste of time.”

“Your oh-so-valuable time,” Blue says, with slightly less bite than she might have used a year previous. So, no actual hate, but a decent seeming of it. She is wearing knee-length khaki shorts, like a spectacularly unsexy version of Indiana Jones, and an oversized ACDC t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off.

Gansey is currently unloading a bargain box of twelve white candles into the Pig. Watching this, Adam says, “Isn’t the point of camping having a campfire?”

“The point of camping is pissing in the woods,” Henry chirps from the front seat of the BMW. He claimed it upon arrival, with a grand cry of ‘shotgun!’ despite that none of them cared to compete with him for it, and has been doing something with his phone ever since. Selfies, Adam suspects.

“These aren’t intended to replace a campfire,” Gansey explains. “They’re for the seance.”

There’s a brief moment of silence. Even Henry looks up, expression shifting from ‘smize’.

“You lived with a dead guy once,” Ronan says eventually. He doesn’t continue, but he doesn’t really need to.

Gansey looks perturbed by their reactions, almost affronted. “It’s a thing.”

“Ineloquent,” Henry comments. Whether it’s a criticism is debatable, considering the growing delight on his face.

“Camping in the woods, marshmallows, figuring out which tent Henry is going to sleep in, amateurish communication with spirits - they’re all part of the experience.”

“Obviously, I’ll be sleeping in your tent,” Henry says. He’s not wrong - it is obvious. “Blue requires my body heat, and Ronan might dream a murderer or attempt to hold my hand in his sleep.”

“In your dreams,” Ronan replies from where he’s retreated to the driver’s seat of the BMW. There’s the distinct sound of someone being hit, and a squawk.

“Yes, it is a thing. From Cabin in the Woods,” Blue tells Gansey.

“Wrong Turn,” Ronan contributes.

“Blair Witch Project.”

“Cabin Fever.”

“Do all those movies contain seances?” Adam interjects.

“Don’t ask me,” Ronan replies. Adam can’t hear the shrug, but he knows it happens anyway. “I haven’t seen any of them.”

“My point is that you should not base your ideas of typical teenage experiences on films where most of the teenagers involved end up brutally murdered,” Blue continues. “Plus, you know. Our lives thus far.”

“This is not like that,” Gansey says. “That was magic. This is teenage incompetence, and the worst that will come of it is irresponsible fire management involving the candles.”

Even Adam makes a disgusted sound at that. There’s rustling from the front of the BMW, and then Gansey is at once attacked with a still-laced sneaker and a hat last seen perched on Henry’s hair. The hat falls short, but the shoe bounces off Gansey’s left thigh when he moves into its path trying to evade it.

“When we get murdered in the woods, it’s your fault,” Blue intones, for a moment sounding just like Maura.

The fact of the matter is that most of the area within a few hours drive of Henrietta has felt the imprint of, at the very least, Gansey’s feet in his previous explorations. Instead of putting him off of his idea of camping, this has just imbued him with the impression that he knows of all the best camping areas, even if he has never personally stayed at one.

Adam sleeps most of the drive once he’s tuned out the sound of Henry and Ronan’s bickering, stretched awkwardly across the back seat of the BMW, and only wakes when the engine turns off.

“C’mon Parrish,” Ronan chides, twisted around so that he can shake Adam’s ankle. Like most things about him, it’s a study in contrasts - brisk voice, soft expression. “Wakey wakey.”

“I am awake,” Adam replies, which is at least seventy percent true. “We here?”

“No, we’re on the side of the road, I just had to make a quick stop to bury Cheng’s body. Yeah, we’re here.”

“You can’t kill him. Can you imagine how much Blue and Gansey would bitch about it?” Adam peels his face off of the interior of the car. He might have drooled on it, but if so it’s not the first time.

“It truly hurts me that that is your only concern,” Henry says from somewhere outside the car.

“Yeah, I bet your heart is breaking, you annoying fucker,” Ronan replies, which means that his irritation has crossed over from his normal levels to whichever Henry seems capable of inciting. Adam deals with this by pushing himself out of the car and into the great outdoors, ignoring it entirely.

Blue is allowing Gansey to help her into her backpack over by the Pig. The gracious nature of it is new, but when he watches it Adam can just about imagine Blue in her thirties acting just the same way. Occasionally, anyway. He doubts she’ll ever change that much.

“Cute,” Ronan commentates, seemingly oblivious to the fact he is putting Adam’s pack over one of his shoulders even as he says it. “We walking, or what?”

“It’s an hour hike,” Gansey says, shouldering his own pack, as though he hasn’t already told them it’s an hour hike multiple times. They’ve walked far further without half as much organisation, which Adam assumes is ‘part of the experience’ also. Gansey is, as ever, a gleaming example to hikers everywhere, down to his well-broken-in boots and his precise understanding of hike planning. “Is everyone ready?”

“Yes mother,” Blue replies, elbowing him in the ribs and ignoring that Henry is still fighting with his own pack over by the BMW. “Lead the way.”

The area Gansey has selected for them to camp in is, admittedly, quite lovely. It’s not Cabeswater - nothing else is - but the grass is long and rich-smelling, and there’s a tiny stream curving around the edge of the clearing on three sides, murmuring sweetly to itself.

The tents are quickly raised side-by-side and then abandoned in favour of establishing a fire pit. By the time they’ve collectively gathered stones, wood and Ronan’s obviously-dreamed lighter, the shadows are stretching long. Blue is allowed the honour of lighting the fire, though Adam is the one who nurses it into something other than a pathetic smoke trail.

“Dinner,” Gansey announces with obvious relish once they’re seated, and produces five packages of freeze-dried meals. “Would you like beef stroganoff or beef stroganoff?”

“Were they having a sale?” Henry asks, accepting his gingerly.

“I thought it would be the one least likely to look edible,” Gansey replies. “I was curious.”

“Not curious enough to investigate the multitude of other options, I suppose.”

“Mostly I thought it would be easier to prepare them together,” Gansey admits. “Blue?”

Blue was apparently in charge of carrying the cooker, and Henry the metal pot. True to Gansey’s prediction, the resultant brown sludge they cook looks utterly disgusting, though the smell is surprisingly inviting. It’s only when they go to serve it that they find that, while Adam brought the tin bowls, Ronan didn’t bring the cutlery. They eat with their fingers instead, Adam’s turning pink with the heat of it and his mouth.

Gansey also has all the necessary ingredients for s’mores, which they blacken in the fire a few times before Adam gives up and uses the cooker instead. Gansey eschews that in favour of sugar-charcoal, even when Henry Googles and recites statistics of charcoal as a carcinogen. Blue puts him in a chocolate-smeared headlock to stop him, and his phone nearly falls into the fire.

It’s full dark when Gansey, his contacts exchanged for glasses glinting in the light, starts to drift a bit. There’s a quietude in him now that isn’t emptiness, but instead something bigger. Like Cabeswater is living inside of him, a complicated and immense kind of peace, and even as that calls to the like in each of them, the rest of them have to act as the anchors to hold Gansey here.

It’s not so bad, really. All it takes is Henry elbowing him and passing him a candle to bring him back.

“It’s time,” he says, all delight, as Henry gives the rest of them candles too. “Should I refer to the WikiHow page for seances, do you think?”

“Please do,” Henry replies, passing Adam his candle. It’s a chunky, inelegant thing with a crooked wick, and it smells like a caricature of vanilla.

Blue squints at Adam for a moment, and then snatches the candle from his hands. “Not you.”

“Excuse me?”

“She’s right,” Gansey mutters after a moment, brow furrowing. “We don’t any of your actual magic involved in our pseudo-magical ritual. Scram.”

“By that logic, Ronan shouldn’t be involved either,” Adam points out, though he does scram.

“He’s awake, it’s fine,” Henry replies. “Lynch, no magic for the next ten minutes.”

“No problem,” Ronan says lazily, still lying beside the fire. “I’m not holding any candles.”

“They go at the cardinal points,” Gansey says, and then produces a compass so he can place them correctly. Then he extracts a large bag of salt from his bag, holding it aloft. “Henry, pour this in a circle around us, if you will. Be careful not to leave any gaps.”

“This is beginning to sound suspiciously like one of movies you mentioned earlier,” Henry says to Ronan, though he does as bid anyway.

Once the salt is poured in a vague oval shape, the candles are placed and lit, and the others sit in their Gansey-assigned places, the ceremony can apparently begin. Adam settles in the mouth of one of the tents, watching them thrown into relief by the campfire in the centre of the circle, Blue’s face painted gold and the line of Ronan’s spine a silhouette.

“Oh! We need an offering,” Gansey says. “I hope you all brought something suitable?”

Thus begins a ten minute debate on what can be classified as suitable. In the end, they have a handful of wildflowers (Gansey), a collection of pennies (Henry), a tin cup of water from the stream (Blue), and a stick of gum as well as an empty wrapper (Ronan, obviously). His assertion that Noah would have loved it is the only thing that stops Gansey from sending him out of the circle to hunt for something ghosts would like better.

They deposits the offerings in the stream-washed pot, and then resettle, reaching out to join hands. Gansey prompts, “Henry?”

Henry takes over without pause, all ringmaster-grandeur. “Welcome, kind spirits, inside our circle. We’ve gathered here to commune with you in the hope that you’ll show us a sign of your presence. Please, speak with us.”

In the following silence, there’s an unmistakable sense of actual expectancy from the four of them in their flesh-and-salt circle. Even when you’re performing a WikiHow seance, it’s hard to remove the idea that it really might work when you’ve seen real magic.

There’s nothing. Adam listens, hears nothing, and then looks into the fire to the things he can always see if he looks long enough.

“Is anyone with us?” Blue asks. The shapes in the flames brighten in response to her voice, but Adam blinks them away.

“That was boring,” Ronan says after approximately two minutes of absolutely nothing happening.

“That was perfect,” Gansey crows.

“We really should have brought an Ouija board,” Henry muses. “For maximum effect.”

“The maximum effect of nothing fucking happening?”

“Let’s end the ritual,” Blue says sternly. “In case.”

“Thank you for your presence,” Gansey says. “Go in peace.”

It’s probably Adam’s imagination that the fire ripples just a little bit with Gansey’s words, like someone has just moved past it. No one else notices it, anyway.

Adam jerks awake because Ronan does, because it’s impossible not to pressed this close and because by now it’s habit.

“It’s okay,” Adam is already mumbling, and then jerks again when Ronan, sounding much more alert than he does, demands, “Did you hear that?”

Adam listens. There’s a rustling outside of the suddenly-very-flimsy tent walls, and for a moment he enters the pleasant fantasy that it might just be the wind before he realises that there is no wind. Instead, it’s the sound of something moving nearby - something large.

“It’s probably just a bear,” he says, though quietly.

There’s not much light in the tent, but he can see that Ronan’s eyes are wide as he hisses, “I can’t believe you can say ‘just a bear’.”

Instead of continuing that...potential argument, Adam pushes himself up, rustling free of the sleeping back and groping for the flashlight by the tent door.

“Adam.”

It’s said in his ear, breathless and half-whispered. Literally breathless - there’s no warmth of exhaled air.

Also, it’s his deaf ear.

The strangeness of it is compounded when Gansey says from outside the tent, the kind of calm that just barely covers for alarm, “Ronan, Adam. Get up. Slowly.”

Adam unzips the tent door and slides free, feeling the intensity of Ronan’s movement behind him as he follows. It’s black outside besides the very faint glow of a few embers and the stars overhead, and Adam can only tell where Gansey is because of the sound of his quickened breath.

“Look,” Gansey whispers, and Adam nearly says at what when he sees what Gansey means.

It’s dark. There’s no explanation behind the two matching pinpricks of red-orange light at a edge of the clearing just beyond the edge of the trees. Eyes, set higher that they would be on any normal-height human.

Ronan mutters a curse, clearly seeing it too. Henry, despite having seen Cabeswater bleed to death, says, “Mothman?” in a voice that trembles but still has a tracery of humour in it, because that’s just who he is.

“What do we do?” Blue asks. Adam can’t tell where she is in the dark.

“Running water,” the voice in his ear whispers again. There’s a echo of command there, and also sudden and welcome familiarity.

“Across the stream,” Adam tells the others. “Backwards. No sudden movements.”

It’s only the star-shine that means they can find the stream at all, nevermind backwards and too frightened to look away from the eyes. There’s no doubting that’s what they are, despite the fact they don’t blink - behind them, there’s intent, alien and only barely readable as that at all. Adam’s bare feet slip in carefully, the water surprisingly deep but the bottom firm enough to hold his weight. The other four do the same, hissing at the cold of it.

“Now what?” Ronan asks, his hand finding Adam’s.

“Cross it. Get to the other side,” Adam says, with sudden surety. “I don’t think it can follow-”

It happens very quickly. Blue, off to Adam’s left, draws in a quick breath and stumbles over something on the streambed, falling backwards in the stream with a splash and a sharp, “Fuck!” There’s a soundless moment where nothing happens, and then there’s a long lowing noise like a big animal dying.

“Fuck,” Ronan echoes, and jerks in Blue’s direction to pull her free of the water even as he shoves Gansey up onto the bank.

Adam, torch in hand, flips the switch. The beam of it falls directly on the - thing as it bounds across the clearing, strides too long and shambling, like the body can’t quite keep up with the intent of whatever is inside of it. It’s all fur and stench, the awful smell of death. Henry makes a low, sick sound, dragging Adam back over the stones along with him. They fall back onto the bank together, scrabbling up onto the grass.

For a moment, Adam doubts. The thing is so tall it looks like it could simply step across the water. There’s no explanation for the way it halts at the far edge of the stream and looks down at the water, close enough they can see every falling-apart inch of its hide. It looks like it crawled from a grave. Maybe it did.

It makes that noise again, a gentle and carrying threat. Adam’s heart is beating so hard he thinks he could drop dead, half-tangled in Henry and aware there’s no outrunning the thing if the voice is wrong.

His flashlight goes out. Blue shrieks, and there’s a flash of bright white like lightning from their side of the stream to the other, illuminating the thing for a split second before it makes impact. There’s a rush of noise and movement, retreating, and then the flashlight comes back to life. There’s nothing there.

“...is it gone?” Henry hisses, pushing himself up from his elbows. “What did you do, Parrish?”

“Nothing,” Adam replies, distracted by covering each inch of darkness with the beam of his flashlight looking for movement. There’s nothing, besides what looks like a few gobbets of meat on the ground and impressions of distorted footprints. “It wasn’t me.”

“Christ fucking alive,” Ronan says. “Was that…?”

“Noah?” Blue whispers.

There’s no wind, no voice murmuring in either of Adam’s ears. But on the other side of the stream, the fire, just embers, flickers back to life.

#trc #gangsey #whither shall i follow #strange constellations #my fic #horror themes #the raven cycle

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thepersephonecabin · 5 years

Text

due to the fact that time works differently for noah, even after finially going to rest at the end of book four, there are still moments in the future of the gangsey that he appears, at important moments in their lives, but never for long or in the way he used to.

it’s always fleeting and never explainable like gansey glancing in the rearview and having to double-take because he could have sworn he saw noah squeezed in the backseat just like he used to be, or adam seeing him in a crowd only to run after him and have to apologize to someone for mistaking them for someone he once knew. but it always seems to happen when they miss him or need a familiar face most.

like, once the gangsey all leave after helping adam move into his college dorm, adam sits on his new bed and has a moment of melancholic strangeness as he notes how quiet it is in the absence of his friends. suddenly he feels a chill head to toe, and he looks up only to notice that the window is fogged up despite it being a hot august day. when he gets closer, he sees himself in the glass’s reflection and the fog is curiously located over where his reflection’s cheek would be. he rubs it at it, but the fog doesn’t go away. for a second he swears he could hear a familiar laugh, but then decides its his imagination.

another time on their year off, blue, gansey and henry pull into a small family-owned motel in a tiny town just west of Death Valley for the night and they send henry in to ask for a room. when the elderly woman behind the desk is handing henry the key to the room, she looks at henry very intently and says “thank you for looking after them for me” in a strange hollow voice. before he can ask what she means, the woman seems to snap out of it like a trance, smiles, and pleasantly asks if he needs any extra toiletries as if it never happened. henry is sufficiently creeped out, and forgets to ask for extra shampoo and conditioner bottles. henry never vocalized it but it had come on a day when he’d been feeling insecure about how he fit in with the magical world blue and gansey seemed to belong to, and he felt so oddly comforted by the weird mystery of the moment that it was like he finally understood the mysticism that surrounded his boyfriend and girlfriend constantly.

noah’s also there when blue is getting ready and putting on her earrings before her wedding to gansey and henry. she was already in her dress and it was right after the groomsmen ronan and adam had come in to get a glimpse at her and wish her luck before the ceremony. she had just been thinking about how cleaned up ronan and adam had been in their suits and how unfortunate it was that noah wouldn’t be standing at the end of the aisle with gansey alongside them. she thought she saw a flash of a white suit in the corner of her eye and he was there just long enough for her to feel him press a chilly kiss into the back of her neck and hear the barely there words, “you look beautiful” but as soon as she turns to look, she wonders if she heard them at all.

he is usually not physically perceived by the original gangsey members, but mostly by their children. you know that old myth that children are most sensitive to paranormal energy and therefore are most likely to see ghosts.

it begins really with blue, henry, and gansey’s firstborn child, a boy who is clearly biologically henry’s son but who is named richard campbell gansey the fourth anyhow. all three parents were of course overjoyed, but blue and gansey had felt a little bittersweet about how noah wasn’t there to meet the baby. a few nights after he’s born and comes home from the hospital, gansey gets up in the middle of the night once when he hears the baby crying, but by the time he gets his glasses on and hobbles to nursery, the baby is no longer crying, but quietly giggling and the rocking chair beside the cradle is rocking gently as if it recently had someone sitting in it. he walks over to the cradle and the baby is perfectly content, waving up towards the mobile, but the mobile isn’t moving. suddenly gansey is tearing up, and he doesn’t know why, because he isn’t particularly sad but he almost feels the way you feel when you see an old friend for the first time in a while.

these strange moments happen every once in a while, but it isn’t until gansey IV is old enough to talk that anyone makes sense of them. one day, gansey IV sees a photo of noah and asks his mom who that is. Blue is surprised for a moment, but smiles sadly and says that it’s his uncle noah. Gansey IV asks when uncle noah will visit again, because he misses him. Blue asks him what he means, after all, noah was laid to rest long before gansey IV was born. How did her son remember and miss a boy he never met? Gansey IV doesn’t have an answer really, as young children rarely do.

over the years when asked questions about noah from the photographs by her younger cousins and siblings, opal begins to tell them that that noah is their families guardian ghost. it’s like how other families have guardian angels, theirs has a guardian ghost. this is evidenced by other weird moments with the kids.

once, blue and gansey’s daughter while being babysitted by ronan spends a few hours running back and forth through the sunflower fields at the barns laughing and talking to herself. ronan lets her cause shes not hurting anything. after a while, she tires herself out and ronan asks what that was all about, fully prepared for her to answer in psychic babble about the future or dead people as he’s come to expect from the children of blue sargent who seem to have picked up some of the 300 Fox Way psychic sensitivities that must have skipped blue’s generation. what he isn’t ready for is for the little girl to very matter-a-factly say that she had been playing tag with uncle noah. ronan is suddenly very serious and orders her to tell him exactly what shes talking about. she says she liked playing tag with noah but that it was never fair because every time she almost caught him he would disappear and appear somewhere further away or behind her. from the way she talks about it, it seems like this isn’t the first time they’ve played this game together. (after this, ronan may or may not have to excuse himself to the bedroom to cry for a moment away from the prying eyes of children).

ronan of course relates this experience to adam when adam gets home from his day job of being a superhero family attorney who helps domestic and parental abuse victims find justice and loving homes. adam is as shook up by it as he is, but says maybe it really was noah. maybe at the end he had projected himself into these little moments before he disappeared totally their senior year. after all, he had been able to project himself back in time seven years to commune with gansey as he was dying, maybe he’d been able to do the same but in the future. when blue, henry, and gansey show up to pick the kids up, they mention it to them causing them to all sit down and seriously question all the moments of paranormal weirdness they’ve encountered since noah said goodbye (you know the ones that arent otherwise explained by their general existence as a dreamer, a mirror, magician, reincarnated magical forest, and such. after glendower gansey never gave up searching for the unknown and magical, so magic is part of their lives anyway). it’s just noah’s parting gift to them, a way of him being with them and part of their children’s lives even if he can’t be with them all the time like he used to be.

#sorry yall i have raven cycle feelings today #the raven cycle #the raven boys #noah czerny #blue sargent #richard gansey #richard gansey iii #adam parrish #ronan lynch #opal lynch #opal lynch parrish #henry cheng #rebloggable #feat. all my headcanons about the future of the gangsey that maggie stiefvater is sure to debunk with call down the hawk

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