#sorry trc fans

[lesbocrocker]

this is my gansey fancast. im sorry to everyone involved.

[queerstudiesnatural]

Disliked characters I enjoy poll

[volfoss]

actually yeah im making a quick poll on this. for anyone who has been around long enough to remember when i made my massive clamp readathon situation (in which i read every single one of the works they put out) be everyones problem. hi. im doing it again but much worse now. reading about 400 volumes (and more if i can find more) of tezuka osamu's work. i am just curious on the general consensus of if i should upload thoughts as i read each one (ie: one post being like i finished kimba/jungle kingdom, heres my thoughts) or just have a MASSIVE post of hey. read them all heres my thoughts (as i did with clamp. which is when i found out tumblr had a max text limit)

[kelliealtogether]

Rating: General Audiences

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Laundry, Meet-Cute, Fluff and Humor

Summary:

The laundry room certainly had room for improvement.

That didn’t stop with the decor, but extended to how his fellow residents used it, because someone hadn’t even waited the five minutes it took for Adam to get to the laundry room to take his clothes out of his dryer and stuff them into someone else’s.

Not on top of the dryer, something he’d experienced in college when someone hadn’t come back to retrieve their clothes and another student lumped them atop the appliance to free it up for use, but in the dryer with someone else’s clothes, so Adam’s chinos, button ups, and socks were all mixed up with a stranger’s t-shirts, boxers, and jeans.

Adam Parrish gets a bit more than he bargained for when someone throws his clothes in a dryer with another tenant's laundry.

[Read it here.]

[capcavan]

I want to know about all the rps except mukade becuz I'm frightened of bugs so I'm scared what might be revealed to me 😭😭

honestly yeah you DO NOT want to know that one lemme pick few 4 you Two Raven Kings one of my personal favourites actually it's aftg/TRC crossover instead of shooting riko ichirou sends him to study in hendrietta, away from exy and everything that was making riko's world *his*- as we find out later this is the school he himself attended riko is looked after by assistant named Taki (my li love note to ao3 fanfic Brothers 🥺), meets kavinsky and blueballs him because the man looks too much like kevin and Riko decide he will avoid all kevin looking ginger looking and blond looking men which leads him to meet Declan Lynch (and will carry bad consequences) - riko kind of replaced blue the boys still go to the house for some tarot readings - riko tries to get private reading to talk to his dead mother but when he reveals that his question is "did she loved me " the women shot him down and tell him to just go home. - riko shows those lacrosse bitches how it's done sorry cant say more just know that declan spend at least 1 week thinking he hooked up with guy who killed someone in prizon because Declan thought the 1 under his eyes was like tear tattoo Two of Them Riko has twin brother who spend his life living in one room of moriyama mansion kept there specifically as organ donor for ichirou and kengo , after ichirou causes kengo's death to help his brother , the Riko2 who is also called Riko because this family doe snot care to let people be people tells him to fuck off and goes to meet Riko1 feeling entitled to his attention and relationship as his twin, he end sup meeting foxes who inform him that riko1 (already part of fox lineup in this au) is currently on suicide watch in psyh ward and spend few days with this absolute oddity (kevin and riko2 nearly get into a fight 3 times over the title of riko's brother) The biggest fan Riko and Kevin get kidnapped right before the final game in TKM and driven fuck knows where where they get locked in basement of some ultra rich man who wants to keep them as collectors merchandise, they have underground apartment all for themselves with room service and all their needs meet. Riko realises in that moment that this is how heaven feels like , nobody beats him here there is no pressure here , it's his ticket to chocolate factory - kevin is with him too and he can not leave him ever again. Kevin though been out of nest for 2 years now he wants to see his father and his friends again and if he wont convince riko to get out of this mess he will ave to work against not only the kidnapper but his brother too.

[excelynch]

are you the king, mirror, ghost, magician or dreamer?

(write the letter of the answer you chose on a paper, at the end you will have the result of each letter)

1 - are you a poet, king or soldier?

a) poet

b) soldier

c) king

2 - choose a part of the song meet me in the woods by lord huron.

a) "I took a little journey to the unknown and I've come back changed I can feel it in my bones"

b) "I have seen what the darkness does. say goodbye to who I was"

c) "meet me in the woods tonight"

d) "I fucked with forces that our eyes can't see, now the darkness got a hold on me"

e) "show me yours and I'll show you mine"

3 - choose one of my opinions about trc that MAYBE you don't agree.

a) the dreamer trilogy has a slightly more interesting story.

b) the raven king ending sucks. like what is that DEMON?

c) adam and ronan were a little quick (but they're perfect anyway, maybe because it was so sudden, i wasn't expecting ronan lynch's secret)

d) declan was right most of the time, he just wanted to take care of what was left of the family.

e) noah deserved at least a decent goodbye.

4 - pick a random thing that was mentioned in the books

a) the pig

b) squash 1, squash 2, squash 3...

c) adam parrish's worn clothes.

d) lampshade dress (or ronan's lack of interest.

e) blue's pink pocket knife.

5 - you woke up at 03:49 am and you feel happy but you don't remember what you dreamed about. later, as the day goes by, you reflect. what did you dream about?

a) I don't remember exactly, just one person in front of me, they says my name and then they hugs me and I feel loved and then aliens take us to a distant planet and I turn out to be that person is a little girl who stole a lego of mine when i was a kid and we started battling for the hand of the cockroach queen.

b) I woke up happy that I finally got some sleep, but dreaming? it's something I'm still trying to remember how to do.

c) I can't remember what I dreamed about.

d) me in front of a mirror and in that mirror I saw myself as a kid. they told me in a calm voice "you can grow up now"

e) a house with all the ghosts that haunt me, they say they can move on now. I'm alone in the house, there's nothing left, but that emptiness doesn't bother me. I like the silence after so much noise.

6 - choose a quote from the books

a) "he threw me out the window"

b) "excelsior"

c) "maybe i dreamt you"

d) "safe as life"

e) "i am being perfectly fucking civil"

7 - ok, without judging the inside of the books, just choose by the cover.

a) the dream thieves

b) the raven king

c) the raven boys

d) blue lily, lily blue

e) call down the hawk / mister impossible /greywaren

8 - which of Ronan's dreams do you most identify with?

a) adam's perfect teeth (i know, i know)

b) matthew, the golden boy who just wants to be a normal boy

c) the other ronan who was born to die

d) forests and more forests

e) a hoverboard that will save everyone in the end

9 - if gansey is the king, blue is the mirror, ronan is the dreamer, noah is the ghost and adam is the magician so henry is...?

a) the one that's left (maybe you didn't care enough to give him a meaning)

b) madonna's number one fan

c) the bee

d) the son

e) the master

10 - if someone came and told you that you were going to die in a year, how would you react?

a) "no shit, sherlock! now say something new"

b) I would accept my fate and live normally. "After all, we're all going to die, I'm just going to die sooner"

c) I would do what I was always afraid to do.

d) "I've been dead for seven years"

e) I would do anything to change my destiny.

...

if you chose king add a point for ronan. if you chose poet add a point for noah and gansey. and if you chose soldier add a point for adam and blue.

now just add which letter you got the most and tell me in the comments the result :)

a = ronan

b = noah

c = gansey

d = adam

e = blue

I hope that you enjoyed and sorry for any mistakes, I'm learning english :)

I was thinking of doing a "which brother lynch are you" and one about the marauders, what do you think?

[adamprrishcycle]

Okay, you want to talk Ronsey, you better buckle up! (This is going to be long, sorry!)

As the formerly known TRK Anon, I can confidently say that trc is still somewhat fresh in my mind, so I have lots of examples to support my argument. Now, given that I have only read the series once, my character analysis might not be as deep or intense as yours.

If you don't know already, I am a huge Gansey lover/supporter/follower/fan/worshiper/bitch. (Will Patton’s rendition of Gansey drives me absolutely feral!!!!) I have loved him since the very first time we know about his existence (Which is page 15 of TRB). If Gansey is part of the equation, I ship it! Bluesey, Ronsey, Declansey, Adansey, HELL…even Chengsey (I could care less about Henry, so the fact that I acknowledge this ship is a big gesture on my part) I just want to make it clear that I am not an Adansey hater, it's just not my kind of jam (*shrugs*)

I know that what Gansey means to me, Adam is to you. But Adam was tough for me. Like REAL TOUGH to discern. It was not until halfway through TRK (practically when Pynch becomes canon) that I was finally able to appreciate him, to see him eye to eye and say: You ARE knowable. I will give it to Adam, he has the best, most memorable, character growth/development in the entire series (Ronan being a close second). But his stubbornness during TRB/TDT was so unbearable to me. He was such a DICK to Gansey. And yes, there were instances when Gansey deserved it (like the hospital scene) but most of their interactions (at the beginning of the series) are somewhat tense. They are constantly walking on eggshells, afraid to trigger/offend/provoke the other. There are MULTIPLE references to them fighting pre-canon, mostly about money, occasionally about who owns who. The whole DC trip was so stressful for all parties involved. In fact, Adam was so unapproachable that Gansey and Blue kept their relationship a secret because of how difficult he had been back then. (Honestly, I think he would have unalive them both) Plus, he is a hypocrite (I guess we all are) because when the rent thing happens, he goes to Gansey first and throws a fit about it!! But when he finds out that Ronan actually paid his rent, he is “cool” about it. He doesn’t argue with him. He doesn’t feel offended. He just accepts it (it being both the money and the fact). The one thing that really upsets me is Adam wanting the favor for himself. I understand why he wants it, but he knows it is Gansey’s life purpose to find Glendower. It feels like a betrayal, you know? I just cannot stand people being mean to Gansey, it triggers me!!!!

And yes, I get it, there are some good moments between them. Like the call with Mallory when Gansey is trying to make Adam laugh. Or Adam fixing/diagnosing the pig. Or the two of them being ushers on Raven Day. But these moments are so…normal (mundane?) that they don’t feel special.

To me, Adansey is a somewhat “toxic” ship. It is a one-sided relationship, because Gansey gives and gives and Adam refuses to take. Adam practically (and literally) loathes? abhors? despises? everything that Gansey stands for (money, friendship, status, family, you get the gist). How can you possibly love someone that is the poster child of everything you hate?! I think Adansey would be the perfect ship for enemies to friends to lovers.

But Ronsey, oh my dear Ronsey!!!! To me, Ronsey is all about Gansey and Ronan meeting before Niall’s death. The way Gansey describes Ronan before his father’s death is so intoxicating. Gansey mourning the joyful boy that Ronan used to be. Gansey getting emotional over Ronan’s laugh. Gansey being completely and utterly amazed by Ronan’s dream creations (“You incredible creature”). Ronan being unconditionally devoted to Gansey. Ronan being devastated that Gansey has other friends; that Gansey is going to DC with Adam and not him. Ronan and Gansey. Gansey and Ronan. Maybe I am not making any sense right now because my brain convulses just thinking about these two.

They have been through it all. God, there are so many moments pre-canon that I wish we could get to experience. Can you imagine Gansey panicking at the hospital with Ronan’s blood in his hands? Can you imagine Ronan teaching Gansey how to punch?! I can’t remember if canon ever confirms how Gansey acquired his journal, but can you imagine if Ronan bought it for him!?!?!

@singersargentboi said it best: “The thing I love about Ronsey is that even in the books theres this sort of unhinged devotion between them that toes the line at being romantic/sexual.” Let’s unpack this together. Exhibit A) Kavinsky’s substance party. O.M.G. Gansey being such a deranged version of himself that even Ronan cannot stop smiling about it. (“What is it my dog needs?” JUST KILL ME ALREADY) Exhibit B) Ronan dreaming the keys to the Camaro in such a steamy delicate way that I am pretty sure he woke up with a tent in his pants. Exhibit C) Gansey bribing a full-grown adult for Ronan. Exhibit D) Gansey constantly scolding/disciplining/bossing Ronan and somehow stopping the Lynch brothers from killing each other. Exhibit E) Ronan going back home against his dad’s wishes, but still turns to Gansey for comfort (“Can I go and see mom?”) And if all of this does not convince you, I’ll leave you with this: “Gansey was far more of a brother to Ronan than Declan had ever been.”

However, I come to you with a peace offering, a secret third option: RODANSEY. Throughout the series it is constantly noted that 3 is the perfect number for magic ;)

THANK YOU FOR SPILLING YOUR THOUGHTS INTO MY ASK BOX 😍 this is delish and wow a HOT TAKE (to me, a simple woman who will live and die on the hill of adam parrish 🫶) although I understand your grievances from a protect-gansey-at-all-costs point of view! I think you’re right about them having the potential to be a toxic ship because of how much they fight. What’s funny to me is how it seems like they don’t understand each other… yet there’s at least 3 times in TRB alone where they communicate just by looking at each other which is amazing considering from what we know they have only been friends a few years but they’re that close and on that exact same level together. But then… they’re not. I think Adam has just had to rely on himself for so long that he can��t reprogram his brain to think differently, and gansey has had loving parents and a good sibling relationship and intense friendships therefore he can’t even begin to understand adam. They’re on diff planets right? They can’t relate to each other in any way shape or form. But then…. love comes along and makes it work??!??! This is why I’m an adansey girl.

BUT everything you said about ronsey…. That ferocious love I will never ever be over it ever 🥹 unhinged devotion is exactly right. And we all know the when I’m gone dream me the world quote but FOR ME it’s “he couldn’t say it, though. There were a thousand reasons why he couldn’t say it” like???? We were just supposed to move on from that? I can’t I wont.

(side note cuz I gotta defend my boy declan and say he is the best brother ever and I will not expand at this time bc spoilers but the dreamer trilogy will)

Rodansey…… now you’re talking my language. Truce? 🤝 thank u for this ask it’s made my day xx

[veerbles]

it's been a month and a half since I finished the trc series and while I'm still in that nice fic-binging portion of the post-book phase, I've been somewhat unsuccessfully trying to put together my final thoughts on it. so I'm gonna try to do it in writing instead.

I'm not usually a big fan of reading criticism in fandom spaces, so I'm just going to put all my thoughts under a read more and if anyone is interested in reading this: this has been your fair warning.

overall, I obviously enjoyed the books. I think my very first assessment to my s.o. of it the night I finished trk was: good writing, really good character work, excellent world building; so-so plotting.

so here's the plotting thing. just before I read trk I stumbled across an interview with the writer that made me sort of uneasy, and gave me an ominous feeling that turned out to be completely accurate. she told the interviewer, "Secrets and tricks, that’s all I’ve got," and immediately I got the inescapable feeling: this is an author who thinks they're really smart, and wants you to know they're really smart, and they are going to finish the books in a way that makes you think they are really smart, for all the wrong reasons.

let me preface by saying: not every question needs to be answered in the final book of the series. some questions are meant to keep you wondering, and that's fine, as long as they're not integral to the plot. why did the gang find one of the pig's wheels in the mysterious lake? don't know, and it's fine that I don't. iirc, ronan even mentions it at the end of trk and thinks to himself that maybe their adventures with the ley line aren't finished. cool! loose ends!

but some questions are integral to the plot. and in the trc's case, too many of them are left unanswered, to the point where I didn't get even a hint of that 'ooooh, the foreshadowing' feeling you expect to get when everything is finally resolved in a clever way. it left me with the feeling that the writer wanted the book to feel smart and mysterious by using all these tricks and secrets, and then overshot her own abilities to tie all of these tricks together into a cohesive plot, leaving more holes than material.

1. Glendower & Co.

the glendower plotline is one of the most disappointing things I've read in a while. I'm SORRY, but it's true. I love mythology! I loved the potential of this! I don't even mind that he ended up being dead all along - that's fine, if not a bit expected imo. the real magical favor was the friendship we made along the way etc. etc.

but if you really, really think about it, he ended up serving no point to the books. the trc series would've been virtually the same if gansey was obsessed with researching the ley lines themselves for the magical aspect of it, and ended up stumbling upon cabeswater in the exact same way, and wandered around in its caves, and the demon was awoken. glendower could've easily been written out entirely.

OR: the glendower story could've still served a purpose while being dead. they literally woke up both his magicians - gwenllian and artemus - and even drew parallels to two of the main characters by calling ronan and adam "gansey's magicians", but BOTH OF THEM served no purpose to the plot? at all?? I would've even accepted them not serving direct purpose, but instead helping further along blue's character arc. except blue spends three books wondering about her biological father, has one (1) conversation with him, finds out she's a half tree-spirit and... that plotline goes nowhere, enters the game way too late, and doesn't tie in to much else in the end.

or instead, the writer could've leaned into the obvious hint-dropping and played out the reincarnation plot that was lying in waiting. but as soon as the hints about gansey actually being glendower started being too heavy, I knew it wouldn't happen. because again: a writer who wants to come off smarter that their readers won't drop hints that their readers can easily decipher (even when sometimes it's definitely the right thing to do, to improve the reading experience).

the glendower pointlessness pokes more holes in the story. why did noah become a ghost? not every dead person in henrietta does, clearly. presumably, he became a ghost because gansey was dying at the same time. but why? "You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not." gansey heard this glendower line because time is a loop, etcetera; noah whispered it to him before he passed on because he knew he was supposed to, because gansey already told him. but if there's no glendower magic, only ley line magic, then the whole "balance" thing was supposed to be that gansey got to live because noah died. except noah didn't die. presumably #2, noah didn't die (yet) because he was supposed to trade his life for gansey's, which he does, at the end of trk. but what all this means is that noah traded his life for gansey's twice, both when he got stung and when blue kissed him, at two different points in time. and we still have no explanation, or even a hint of an explanation, for what powered the ghost thing.

2. Prophecies

in the raven boys, we get several prophecies: one, from the fox way psychics; blue will kiss her true love and he will die. two through five, from the dreaming tree; blue will kiss gansey, in his aglionby sweater, and he'll ask her to kiss him knowing it'll mean his death. adam will cause gansey's dying and his friends will turn on him. gansey will see glendower lying in his grave. blue and gansey will almost-kiss in his car and talk about wanting to just pretend they can.

in the raven king, ronan says the prophecies in the dreaming tree aren't prophecies at all: "[They're] Nightmares. [...] When I dreamt that tree, that’s what it did. Worst-case scenarios. Whatever mindfuckery it thought would be most likely to mess you up the next day.”

except, blue's vision is an exact match for the kiss scene in trk. gansey's vision about glendower is an exact match. their combined vision about the almost kiss is an exact match for a scene in bllb. all of these come true.

so one of two explanation has to be true: ronan is wrong, or the writer ret-conned herself into a corner so she won't have to deal with the last vision. but this is an internal conflict - if ronan is wrong, that means adam's vision is a prophecy, and it just never gets addressed properly. did he really change his fate by sacrificing himself to cabeswater? how? what was supposed to happen, originally? and if the future changed, what was the point of showing the vision to begin with...? it's very possible there could be a reason, but seeing as it's never presented to the reader, it brings me back to the writer wanting to be smart more than she cares about the reading experience.

3. Henry

I'll probably get hate for this, but that's okay. what the fuck was the point of henry?

don't get me wrong: he's a fun character. I'd argue that he's not significantly more fun than the fox way ladies, or mr. gray, or any of the other side characters that didn't get a huge amount of focus and certainly could've, but it's less that I'm mad about henry than the fact that I'm mad about henry's patchwork insertion.

henry gets mentioned for the first time in bllb, and only gets actual action in trk. that's fine. another side character. but in a sudden, unexpected turn, he goes from cameo to main character that is present in all of the big plot moments, is suddenly in the gang, and is tied into gansey and blue's future post-canon...?

if henry was so important, he should've been written in from the get-go. I cannot be expected to care about a character that turned up in the third act of the play. if henry wasn't so important, but serves as a plot device in the fight against the demon and/or a character replacement for noah (like we're in a disney tv show and when a character gets written off another is written in as their "archetype" replacement), he shouldn't be given so much screen time and should definitely not be there at the culmination of the story (gansey dying).

I just couldn't bring myself to be as excited about gansey's plot in trk - when, arguably, trk IS about gansey's plot - because most of gansey's chapters were spent on trying to sell me on henry. and like, he's fun! he ends up deeper than he looks! the toga party chapters are... fun...? but I didn't see the point, and so couldn't bring myself to care all that much. and now whenever he's in fics I resent him, and that's sad, because it's for no reason at all. if he just got treated as the minor character he is, I would've liked him so much more.

CONCLUSION: I might add more points when I think of them. lol, sorry. this is a rant, not an actual review.

[theravenkin]

bro pls convince me to read the raven cycle i started it but i got bored and i want to get into it so bad.

so as much as i wanna say, hey this changed my life and it comforts and supports me when i'm having a rough time and it's sometimes all i think about to an unhealthy level and thus you have to read it--as much as i wanna say that, i don't believe that last bit. because here's the thing--not everybody's gonna connect to trc, or to any piece of media, the same way. if you didn't connect with it right away, there's not a great chance you'll end up being as infatuated with it as so many of us are.

however, i do think it could be worth another shot. if you need a reassurance that it's worth getting through the first book or so, here are a couple:

in the following books, you get expanded worldbuilding and new perspectives from different characters (a lot of us liked the first book pretty good but then really fell in love during the second or third book)

the characters get sooo much more blorboable in the following books

i personally think a couple of the biggest turn-offs people have about the first book--mainly, as i've heard, blue's sort of "not like other girls" thing and ronan's personality as seen by the others--are very well developed and remedied in the following books

the found family and Themes go absolutely crazy as the series goes on

there's a spin-off series that is very different, but still really good imo, and revisits fan-favorite characters while introducing some new really awesome characters too

one of my favorite things about the series is the vibes, tbh. as much as the themes and layers and mysteries and theories and metaphors and everything else make me foam at the mouth, it's also just very...youthful, but in a dark and real way. like, this is how it feels to be in high school sometimes--it's not always fun and carefree, sometimes it absolutely sucks and you just wanna fast forward through time, but also parts of it feel like a magical world that nobody else can see, that has been made just for you and your best friends to explore

the magic gets way magickier. like, if there wasn't enough magic for you in the first book, just wait. it gets way magickier.

it also gets much gayer in the second book and exponentially gayer from there on. hold fast

sorry for taking so long to respond to this ask, but i really hope you decide to give the series another try! i think it's worth it. but of course remember, if it's not for you, it's just not for you, and that's totally ok. :)

[decladams]

YES i love all that! i was hoping they would be transfem, it’s such an underrepresented “headcanon.” my personal image of adam leans very nonbinary/transfem, especially post Cabeswater Incident. i became an ethel cain fan after i’d started thinking about adam that way but her version of rugged southern femininity is definitely a good reference point. i’m curious about your thoughts on transfem adam and ronan in terms of their “journey,” appearance, etc. basically i just want to know more of your thoughts in general haha.

yeahhhh!!! for context: in the fic i'm imagining ronan being out as transfem (socially transitioning but not much else) but adam still questioning and that's where my notes/thinking comes from so here's a condensed version of my other written ramblings

so i feel like ronan's hypermasculinity (the cars and racing and alcohol and drugs etc.) is possibly overcompensation for not really feeling like a man at all. and like he's got this image of niall as like a Man™ and being so similar (and constantly compared) to niall, ronan is desperately trying to emulate that. also general anger issues, like, yeah, stifling parts of yourself for years is going to do that 👍. ALSO with the whole dreamer thing it's like "dreamers are to be classified as weapons" and when you're an eldritch being that can dream things to life what is gender anyway?

for adam i feel like his upbringing it doesn't really lend itself to questioning and so by the time he got into aglionby it was such a good opportunity that he just kept repressing it to try and be a Boy™ that fits in with all the other rich white boys. but adam being adam, he doesn't fit in with them but he thinks it's the trailer park and not the fact that he just doesn't feel like a boy/man at all. like ronan, being a Man™ has connotations (fathers yk?) but unlike ronan he doesn't want to be his father at all. also, similar to ronan being a dreamer, adam had that connection to cabeswater and like yeah forests don't really have gender and that was new and fun and interesting and cracked the egg a bit maybe.

out of personal experience some of my friends' brothers attend all-boys schools in the area (i attend an all-girls) and those are toxic little hellholes at times. aglionby is probably just like the rest of them which is to say terribly transphobic and homophobic which just layers on the repression for all of them. and then with everything in trc canon you don't have time to unpack that until school is done and dead kings are done etc etc.

i guess that's mostly journey/explanation? im not sure this answers anything sorry but it is fun to write multiple paragraphs about something im very fixated on at the moment haha

[olreid]

Ok. What do u think chapter 26 meant??? I love it SOOO much even though al the fae creatures didn’t make much sense to me

i mean i dont have a definitive reading of what was actually going on due to ive never been a particularly close reader of the mechanics of trc lore but i just love what it does for ronan's arc. ronan was a child who was told that what he was was secret, which he took to mean bad. blue voice i could say you're evil because you can take things out of your dreams; ronan voice yeah, you could. he grew up thinking he was the only one; he grew up wondering what was wrong with him. please god what am i tell me what i am, et cetera.

while i'm not generally a huge fan of tdt's broadened scope, one of its side effects is the picture it gives us of a world that is actually full of dreamers and dreams and dreamt things. the lynch family is not unique in this way, as we are given to believe in the first series; there is a place underneath the world that ronan feels is killing him - the world of high school and college and stable employment - and in that other place he is not an aberration or a devil or a mistake. it is this place that ronan is able to access in this particular dream, and while it's a dream he's had since childhood, it is greywaren (book)'s explanation of exactly what ronan is and how he came to be born that makes me read this dream not just as a childhood fantasy but as a memory of a real place where he likely lived before being shaped into a son of the lynch family. i read the fae creatures that populate the barns in this chapter as some of the same entities that urge ronan to come home to wherever the greywaren came from when he's deciding whether or not to become human again. (i suppose that's a reading some could disagree with but honestly, whether this place is the "other place" niall and mór came to know or whether it originates in ronan's imagination doesn't really matter: as bryde teaches ronan, we make reality. for ronan there exists a place that is filled to the brim with people like him, and whether it exists because he used to live there or because he can imagine it is sort of irrelevant.)

i honestly also read this chapter as deeply transgender due to what i personally bring to the text; there is a deep loneliness to ronan that obviously comes from the grief of losing niall and by extension the rest of his family, but there is also a more deep-seated, more existential loneliness that comes when you think you are the first of your kind, when you believe yourself to be wrong or twisted or broken in a way no one has ever been before. conversely, there is a specific kind of joy that comes with the discovery that not only are you not the first, you are one of many, that those who are like you love being that way, that there is a place you can go where you can lose yourself in a crowd. it is that joy ronan experiences in this chapter: "how exceptional all these guests were! they were dressed in all manners and they were all races and ages and genders and sizes. some of them did not seem to be human [...] his heart burst with gladness. gladness and relief. thank goodness, he thought in the dream."

i'm literally so sorry for what im about to do but it genuinely does remind me of the ending of wild geese:

he has a place in the family of things. he can see himself in others. he is not alone in the world. thank god!!!

[hunxi-after-hours]

Hi ! I'm sorry if I'm bothering you, but I had a question. Feel free to ignore me tho.

So, I think you're a raven cycle fan, right ? And also a tgcf one. I just needed to know if you saw some connection between Mu Qing from tgcf and Adam Parrish from trc. They just ... Give me the exact same vibes and I lowkey feel crazy about it and as if I'm seeing stuff that isn't there, you know ?

oh you're definitely not crazy, anon, it's because both characters deal with similar intersections of class relationships and that peculiar love-hate-envy-gratitude-resentment that comes from having good friends several income brackets above you

[akajustmerry]

I would also go insane over a trc show but also kinda hope one never gets made bc I know how picky I am abt adaptations of books I love

HOWEVER, every time I watch reservation dogs I think abt how good Paulina alexis would be as blue, and every time I watch his dark materials I think abt how good amir Wilson would be as Adam, then I spend the next half hour imagining how I would adapt trc for tv

Anyway, I know fan casting teen characters is hard bc it gives you a very narrow age range of actors to choose from, but do you have any actors you think would be really good as a trc character? Even actors who have aged out of the roles now but would have been good when they were younger (for me it's Robert Sean Leonard as Gansey)

okay I delayed answering this until I had a cast in my head but omg yes Amir Wilson as Adam is perfect!! My fancast for the rest would be:

young Keke Palmer as Blue

young George Mackay as Gansey

young Archie Renaux as Ronan Lynch

Noah Schnapp as Noah Czerny (sorry to type cast him here but he would be so good)

Aja Naomi King as Maura

Lisa Bonnet as Neeve

Justina Muchado as Calla

Yara Shahidi as Orla

Danielle Brooks as Jimi

Eva Green as Persephone (to fill the Penny Dreadful Vanessa Ives shaped whole in my heart)

Young Alden Ehrenreich as Kavinsky

Young Ki Hong Lee as Henry Cheng

Rami Malek as The Grey Man

Did I miss anyone?? Anyways, this was fun to think about thank you for asking, legend 😊

[crimeronan]

you mentioned not wanting to mod a TOH-AU-specific one yourself but are you on any Discord servers? (…is it parasocial to worry about how to talk to you about stuff in the event of Tumblr blowing up if I have actually sent you a bunch of asks in the past…? I'm sorry if this is weird…)

i'm not in any fandom servers right now unless we're counting a server of close friends who all met through TRC fandom + a server of homestuck ancestor fans that i almost never check. you're welcome to ask for my discord username off anon though! just be aware i am Chronically bad at keeping up one-on-one conversations & i have the memory of a slug. so if i disappear for days it's not because i hate you or am ignoring you on purpose.

[littledreamling]

Ten Books To Know Me

Rules: 10 (non-ancient) books for people to get to know you better, or that you just really like.

I’m considering myself tagged by @that-banhus and @fancy-rock-dove!! I sadly suffer from Gifted Kid Burnout Syndrome currently engaged in a very time-consuming course of study which means I haven’t read a single book from cover to cover in about two years (and I stayed in the YA genre for far too long because it’s easy brain candy) so I’m sorry to say that none of mine will be fancy or sophisticated or longer than about 300 pages. Nonetheless, I enjoyed reminiscing back on some of my childhood favorites that shaped me and some of the series that sustained me throughout my life since!

The DragonKeeper Chronicles Series by Donita K. Paul - I wasn’t raised religiously but I devoured these books like there was no tomorrow. I adored Kale and Bardon and Dar and their whole host of dragon friends (Wizard Fenworth my beloved). If you can stomach or ignore the fairly obvious Christian themes, I highly recommend them for a bit of brain candy.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - this was the first classic book I ever read and it captivated me endlessly. It was the only school book I actually finished and enjoyed. Stories within stories, creator vs creation, voyages that you undertake knowing that you can never go home, this book has it all.

The All For The Game Series by Nora Sakavic - this series comes with a pretty heavy trigger warning for anyone interested in reading it. Centered around a made up sport and a kid on the run from the mafia, it’s dark and intense and drew me in like no other series ever has. Fans of the series will often proudly proclaim that the books make no sense, that the made up sport is confusing at best (absolutely incomprehensible at worst), and that not enough trigger warnings in the world will prepare you for what you’re about to dive into and I fully endorse all three statements. I also fully believe that these books helped me revolutionize how I view relationships between traumatized people (relationships that may not seem healthy to those not involved but are built on a strong foundation of trust and consent), how a good story should end, and showed how healing looks different for everyone. It’s not a book series I recommend lightly but I wholeheartedly recommend it. Proceed with caution.

Six of Crows Duology by Leigh Bardugo - I couldn’t ever get invested in the Shadow and Bone series, but I couldn’t put SoC down. Even now, I can’t explain why it enthralled me so much except to say… morally grey characters are hot, no matter what gender they are 👀

The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater - rounding out the trio of book series that are often mentioned in the same breath (AFTG, SoC, and TRC), The Raven Cycle is a fabulous series centering around four rich boys and the girl who had always been taught to hate them. There’s magic and prophecies and car racing and an enchanted forest and ghosts. It’s a very rich story so every read-through gives up more secrets than the last time you flipped through it.

The Genome Odyssey by Euan Angus Ashley - A sharp veering turn from the previous books, this book helped to shape my passion in my (hopefully) future career. It tells the story of the genome, from its discovery to present day, and how it’s been used to diagnose previously unheard of and incurable genetic diseases, saving countless lives in the process. The author personally worked on every project detailed in the book and every chapter packed such an emotional punch that I had to put it down several times. A must-read if you need to be reminded just how good humanity can be.

The Martian by Andy Weir - This is a relatively recent addition to my ‘favorite books’ shelf but I read this like my life depended on it. I laughed, I cried, and my faith in humanity was restored. I was raised with the same style of dry wit and dark humor that the main character uses to keep his hopes and spirits up while trapped on Mars so reading his inner thoughts often felt like I was catching a glimpse into my own head. I know I’m late to the bandwagon but better late than never. A fantastic book that deserves a reread in the near future (as soon as I have time 😅)

Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby - When a queer couple is killed, their homophobic ex-con fathers meet at the funeral and vow to find who killed their sons. Over the course of their journey for revenge, they start to better understand their sons, each other, and themselves. A book about healing overcoming repression and toxic masculinity.

Redwall by Brian Jacques - an oldie but a goodie. Oh to be a small mouse eating fresh-caught fish and defending your abbey against rats. Every single detail of this story was so masterfully laid-out and described. Reading the first scene never fails to make me hungry and the entire book sweeps you away from beginning to end.

Where Hope Comes From by Nikita Gill - I had to sprinkle in some poetry to the list. This is an anthology of poems written during the Covid lockdown detailing the author’s struggle with despair and eventually finding hope again, even in the most mundane of scenarios. It carries a strong message of positivity while stressing the importance of allowing yourself to feel “negative” emotions too. An excellent read for any poetry fans open to free verse or anyone struggling with their own despair.

As always, I’m not sure who to tag so I’m throwing it open to @aquilathefighter, @virgo-dream, @mathomhouse-e, @ladymegana, and the rest of the Dreamling Nation server! Please tag me, I need book recs!

[tsubasaclones]

It never occurred to me that the tag trc would be used for something other than tsubasa reservoir chronicle until I started getting recommended posts about the raven cycle bc I was using the tag. Very sorry if you are a raven cycle fan and have seen my nonsense. Anyway onto my main point