#the declan/ronan love is building

[squash1]

hello would you please propaganda me on the dreamer trilogy i should probably read it, but i have not had the motivation,,, hhhrghgh. gimme your reasons on why i should read it /nf

“propaganda me” is probably that best phrasing of anything ever. and this is also my favorite topic of propaganda. so yes. ofc.

probably the #1 reason to read the dreamer trilogy is to get More of the raven cycle universe. if you love ronan lynch and you want to see him grow (and fuck up) and change (and fuck up) this is THE book series. adam parrish in all his glory is also heavily featured. because who is ronan without adam (that’s a question that will be answered in these books!). and my beautiful, baby boy declan (i’m biased it’s okay) is Given A Voice finally. plus you meet some new Killer character. cough cough hennessy. cough cough jordan. cough cough carmen. cough cough lilliana. (so many showstopping female characters)

my caveat to all of this, is yes, it is different than the raven cycle. in like the most beautiful, necessary way. (i love trc with my whole heart so i’m not saying this will any malice). i’ve said this before and i’ll say it again (propaganda at its finest) the dreamer trilogy is an embodiment of what young adulthood is — what moving away from childhood Feels Like. trc is very teenage, it’s very big and grand and everything is So important (but it’s also silly because they’re 16/17 year olds), the dreamer trilogy has a tone shift but it’s So Necessary. because there is a tone shift from childhood to the early years of adulthood. things feel smaller, and more difficult, and somehow more confusing, but it’s THE PAY OFF that matters the most (because yes, we’re building Healthy, strong relationships on this dysfunctional family).

personally i LOVE the exploration of dreaming in the series and all the various metaphors that can be applied to the concept. i’ve talked Extensively about dreaming as a metaphor for chronic illness and i think going into the series with that lens would make for a really cool and interesting experience.

the dreamer trilogy at its core is this baller, action packed (but also sad) series that’s going to explode your brain and cause you to question your sanity. and i think the true testament to this series is that despite Sobbing upon finishing it (ending was not even sad, it was just the end of an era), i Immediately wanted to reread. because there’s so much Content, so much Intrigue, so Much To Unpack.

tl;dr ronan lynch is a gay icon throughout, read it read it read it.

p.s. i would like to hear all your thoughts and also this might be the last straw to get me to reread.

[clotpolesonly]

thinking about Declan and the moth again

it HAUNTS ME that the moth is one of the few times that Declan seems to lose his self-awareness completely. like, yeah, he's the ultimate king of repression, but he's usually very conscious of what he's repressing and the fact that he's repressing it. he knows his issues.

he knows that he forces down his emotions in an unhealthy way so that he can be the adult in the room at far too young an age. he knows he can't form healthy relationships because of a lifetime of danger and insecurity. he knows he dehumanized his mother as a means to cope with their batshit family situation. he knows he's competing with his father's ghost for a place in Ronan's life. he knows he resents Matthew for being the primary factor in his parentification and loss of opportunity in life. he knows he loves his father no matter how much he tries to convince himself to hate him. he knows he feels trapped in the life he's leading, doesn't see a way out, and likely wouldn't take it if he did because it would be at the expense of his brothers.

all of these things, Declan acknowledges openly, either to himself in narration or out loud to others. he may delude himself about how well he's coping with his issues, but he has no illusions about what his issues ARE.

except for the fucking moth.

it's such a perfect, on-the-nose symbol that it almost strains credulity for Declan not to acknowledge it as such, and yet not once does he ever look at the moth and feel the way he did about the black string art exhibit that made him recognize how trapped he felt in his life. "how the moth had beaten against the walls for those first few days, until it had learned it could not escape."

the learned helplessness of it - there's no point fighting to get free, just lie down and accept that this is your life. know what you're allowed to do, and have, and be. know what you're not. a creature of his father's making, confined by his father's hand.

and not even something as eye-catching as a butterfly, no, but a quieter subtler moth with eyes like glittering purple-black marbles that will never get to live a life because Niall made it so.

and the symbolic parallel of the display case and the townhouse. the rigid real world structures that Declan himself requested, because they made him feel more secure than being surrounded by dreams, and that his father provided in a well-meaning but ultimately short-sighted attempt to accommodate him. things that Declan only recognizes much later as the cages that they were.

Declan now regrets demanding his dad make the display case by hand, and when he puts himself through Ronan's bad-feeling security system at the end of the series, the memory it hits him with is inheriting the sterile alexandria townhouse that was exactly what he'd claimed to want.

these are symbols of Declan's complicity, in a manner of speaking, in the whole tragic mess that was his upbringing. at some point, quite early on, Declan's oppression became a joint effort, something that he participated in (because a complete lack of control in the situation would have felt worse). it reminds me of Declan struggling to remember which of them first decided to lie to Matthew about what he was, whether that was his dad's idea or if he'd done that of his own volition, just following pattern.

did dad trap him, or did he build the walls himself? or was it both?

but, for once, none of this is acknowledged by Declan in the text. this artistically-minded chronic overthinker carries the moth around with him - one of the two dreams he will never sell, alongside the gift from Ronan - and he stays so uncritically sentimental about it that he releases it on his wedding day with happy/nostalgic tears in his eyes, and it just boggles my mind.

this is the man who looked at a bunch of string and had the immediate revelation that he was utterly miserable and trapped in a spiderweb of a life precariously balanced on a knife's edge where one wrong move could get him and everyone he loved killed, but he looks at a direct, uncomplicated, one-to-one representation of himself and somehow does not recognize that it is not something to think of fondly. that, yes, it may be a symbol of his father's love for him, but it's not good.

[catholic-character-tournament]

Round 4 - Catholic Character Tournament

Propaganda below ⬇️

Harrowhark

I'm pretty sure you've already got plenty of submissions for her so I'll just say she was raised in what is basically a cult (technically a nunnery but let's be real) dedicated to keeping the body of the thing that will kill God behind the rock. One of their prayers is actually "I pray the rock is never rolled away". Harrow is extremely devout as penance for her earlier heretical actions in the tomb as a child (spoiler!) so the Catholic guilt really comes through

imagine being a catholic nun and you meet god, but it turns out he’s a twitch streamer from new zealand who became god because everything got a little bit out of hand. and just before you met him you gave yourself a diy grief-fuelled lobotomy with the help of your best frenemy. imagine how insane you’d be. now multiply that insanity by nine. that’s the fictional love of my life right there.

she meets god. she’s not inspired

she’s number one practitioner of space Catholicism. The locked tomb is chock full of Christian (catholic) imagery themes metaphors etc. just look at her she’s got a bone rosary

They're Catholicism with extra bones. Everyone is a nun. They have what is basically a rosary made from knuckle bones. They technically worship the same God as everyone else, but they're waaaay more focused on The Body in the Tomb (Mary) and we get a moment where we find out that while everyone else prays the equivilent of The Lords Prayer, they're doing the equivilent of Hail Mary. And they paint their faces with skulls.

She thinks leaving dry bread in a drawer is taking care of someone. She's in love with a 10,000 year old corpse (the same one they worship). She spent ALL NIGHT digging with her bare hands to make sure a field had bones every 5 feet so she could fight her girlfriend - I mean, greatest enemy. Spoiler territory: She's been puppeting her parents corpses since she was 8 years old. Instead of grieving her dead girlfriend, she gives herself a lobotomy. She makes soup with bone in it so she can use the bone IN THEIR STOMACH to try and kill them.

The author is/was Catholic and the entire series had heavy Catholic overtones. https://www.tor.com/2020/08/19/gideon-the-ninth-young-pope-and-the-new-pope-are-building-a-queer-catholic-speculative-fiction-canon/ A good breakdown of how it's Catholic

Anti-propaganda (spoilers)

I love the Locked Tomb series but Harrowhark has daddy issues with God, had a childhood crush on God's cryogenic partner, and is in love with God's daughter, not to mention that she's essentially a bone-bender. The religion on her home planet exists in a way that is technically against the will of the canon in-universe God, even. All of this to say, Harrowhark is heretical at minimum if not an outright witch. Terrible Catholic. Burn her.

Ronan Lynch

Uhh fun fact he saw the devil flash his father once, and that's one of the reasons he goes to church on Sundays <3

context for this scene from book 2: ronan is in church with his older brother declan, younger brother matthew, and ghost friend noah "Joseph Kavinsky isn’t someone I want you being around,” Declan added. “Don’t snort. I’m serious.” Ronan merely invested a look with as much contempt as he could muster. A lady reached over the top of Noah to pat Matthew’s head fondly before continuing down the aisle. She didn’t seem to care that he was fifteen, which was all right, because he didn’t, either. Both Ronan and Declan observed this interaction with the pleased expressions of parents watching their prodigy at work. Declan repeated, “Like, actually dangerous.” Sometimes, Declan seemed to think that being a year older gave him special knowledge of the seedier side of Henrietta. What he meant was, did Ronan know that Kavinsky was a cokehead. In his ear, Noah whispered, “Is crack the same thing as speed?” Ronan didn’t answer. He didn’t think it was a very church-appropriate conversation. “I know you think you’re a punk,” Declan said. “But you aren’t nearly as bad ass as you think you are.” “Oh, go to hell,” Ronan snapped, just as the altar boys broached the rear doors. “Guys,” Matthew pleaded. “Be holy.”

Gay Catholic streetracing farmer. Consumed by catholic guilt NOT because of the gay thing but because he can Create things in a way he thinks should be only God's business. Will literally roll up to mass on sunday morning still drunk and bloody.

THIS GOTH KID IS LITERALLY GOD. This is a god trapped in the body of a Catholic teen and if he ever stopped feeling Catholic guilt he’d end the world!!. How is your confession every week that you creating a whole new being? Babygirl the God is coming from inside the house

eldritch entity from beyond the mortal plane wants to be a Real Human Boy, becomes a real (ish!) human (ish!) boy, goes to mass every sunday

Gay boy got his crush an apartment above his church so he could have his two favorite things in one place

gay. I'm not caught up the the series but I went through the tag when the latest book came out and I remember seeing a quote that said he worried if his boyfriend would make it to heaven when he dies because of his agnostic tendencies.

Kid is like a dream warlock who creates psychic horrors and never goes to confession because why would he? and he’s gay

There are no words

basically ronan's powers are inherited from his dead father niall and it means he can bring anything from a dream into real life. so he's got this whole crisis about whether he is a living piece of blasphemy because men are not meant to have the powers of gods or whether he literally is god. which is not acceptable to him for a number of reasons but mostly because he hates himself. his love interest's name is adam and adam lives in a small apartment above a church which the book says focuses the objects of his worship neatly into one building. I love them both dearly. also, this entire page makes me feel like I'm going insane. Ronan Lynch believed in heaven and hell. Once, he’d seen the devil. It had been a low, late morning at the Barns when the sun had burned off the mist and then burned off the chill and then burned the edges off the ground until everything shimmered with heat. It never got hot in those protected fields, but that morning, the air sweated with it. Ronan had never seen cattle pant before. All of the cows heaved and stuck their tongues out as they frothed with the heat. His mother sent Ronan to put them in the shade of the cattle barn. Ronan had gone to the searing metal gate, and as he did, he’d glimpsed his father, already in the barn. Four yards away from him had stood a red man. He was not truly red, but the burned orange of a fire ant. And he was not truly a man, because of the horns and the hooves. Ronan remembered the alienness of the creature, how real it had been. Every costume in the world had gotten it wrong; every drawing in every comic book. They’d all forgotten that the devil was an animal. Looking at the red man, Ronan had been struck by the intricacy of the body, how many miraculous pieces moved smoothly in harmony, no different than his own. Niall Lynch had had a gun in hand — the Lynches had an enormous number of guns of all sizes — and just as Ronan had opened the gate, his father had shot the thing about thirteen times in the head. With a shake of its horns, the unharmed devil had presented its genitalia to Niall Lynch before bounding off. It was an image that had yet to leave Ronan. And so Ronan became a reverse evangelist. The truth burst and grew inside him, and it was laid upon him to share it with no one. No one was meant to see hell before they get there. No one should have to live with the devil. So many homilies on faith were ruined once you no longer required it for belief.

Our boy CHOOSES not to receive the Eucharist because he doesn’t believe he is worthy. The spiritual insight, the devotion, the fact that this teenager is worried he may have a mortal sin weighing on his soul…this boy isn’t just going through the motions, he’s putting work into this.

[cabeswaterdrowned]

Was looking up every mention of Aurora in the books for the char study piece I want to write about her and my jaw dropped here because I had been misremembering that “She was the only person who he could not dazzle, and he loved her for it.” line as being a Bluesey quote when it’s about Niall and Aurora… yikes @ myself. But really when you isolate just that line it is very romantic and fits the definition of romance we see for the other main couples. Bluesey Pynch and Jordeclan are all structured as 

character A (Gansey/Adam/Declan) who is a social masker and disconnected from the ‘real them’ to some degree in a lot of interactions with the world around them x character B (Blue/Ronan/Jordan) who in Blue/Ronan’s case especially is very authentic and blunt and fearlessly themselves, that’s a little more complicated with Jordan who also has to perform as a version of Hennessy and then kind of find herself outside of that at the same time she starts her relationship with Declan, but she’s imaginative and creative the way Blue and in a less artistic way Ronan are and that proves an “authentic” contrast in a similar way, and she’s a helpful relationship for Declan in some of the same ways as Bluesey/Pynch.

 So understanding that’s a notion and type of dynamic this verse generally paints as romantic, Niall and Aurora’s relationship being a warped take on the formula is pretty interesting! Niall wants to be with someone who sees the truth of him and wants the truth of him, which was Mor who is also too complicated and sharp-edged for him to understand or to give him the type of love he wants, so he has to craft someone both much sweeter who is a more conventional housewife for him, but she couldn’t be someone who agreed with him 100% of the time because she had to be fundamentally different from him and also provide him with the faintest, most easily controlled glimmer of what he liked about Mor’s challenging nature, without any danger of her actually leaving or overpowering him. So Aurora can contradict him or call him out when she says he’s lying about the way Ronan was born, but she can’t truly Challenge him there’s a difference. I do get the sense from the way the brothers talk about her and the few flashbacks to her in that time she was more dynamic and complex pre Niall’s death than the Aurora we meet in trc present, which makes sense based on the mythology, and I don’t see a reason for her to not have an individual personality the same way Mathew and Jordan do although it would still be comparatively muted by her role. 

But basically, Niall wanting the same thing Gansey/Adam/Declan do but not being willing to actually build a recirprocal connection with someone with autonomy and offer them support too. There’s no Gansey comforting Blue after Persephone passes or Bluesey connecting over their similarly curious natures and wants and strange-loving relationship with Henrietta, and also none of their arguments which are honestly quite integral. If Niall’s… well does Niall have friends probably not, but theoretically if he had a male friend who made a comment like Henry’s very unfortunate r*pe joke in BLLB Aurora’s wouldn’t take Niall to task for putting her in that situation at all she would probably just smile along… None of Adam and Ronan’s conflicts or their viewing each other as equals would be able to occur same for Jordeclan.

I feel like seeing how that desire to have someone unconditionally understand you can be warped to the point of not respecting your partners agency or seeing them as a person outside of what they provide you really puts the main relationships into perspective for how they’re different, is what I meant to say. That’s not to say they’re without flaws (and they would be boring if they were), and I think some of the notion that perfect understanding is possible is one I would have liked to see questioned a little more than it is in canon, because I think these relationships provide the chars with types of understanding they crave and Might know them better than anyone else, but that doesn’t mean said understanding is absolute. As much as I love Bluesey I do think it’s fair to point out there’s sometimes a gap between how much Blue is encouraged by the narrative to understand Gansey and how much he has to reciprocate because of some misogyny and classism in the narrative, so there’s that. Or rather I’d say he reciprocates the understanding but less so when it comes to gendered conflicts. I think the ideal version of the Pynch arc in TD3 would be that it’s meant to challenge the notion we should rely on one person / our partner to always understand us fully by making it clear how terrible their communication has become and the gaps in their understanding related to their contrasting life goals and desires. It would actually be a really fascinating thing to deconstruct with them and if it had panned out I think that storyline could’ve been something truly special, but then either because of an audience feedback loop or just Maggie getting cold feat about some concepts, there’s a major backtracking to actually-love-solves-everything, Like, in isolation Adam telling Ronan that he’s the only Real thing in his life at this point and that’s worth too much to let go of is really romantic …. but then if you truly think about everything in the text around it and where Adam is at this point, and your reading a tad more cynically, you could also say that it reads less as high romance and more as a sunk cost fallac- but I digress the point was that Aurora & Niall’s relationship functioning as a mirror to these protagonist relationships is interesting, and there’s more to be said about the Mor&Niall/Adam&Ronan parallel and how it intersects with the comparison but I don’t have the energy.

(Also worth noting that while comparatives exist the m/m relationship is obviously never going to operate under the same gendered lines as the m/f romances and so any of those comparisons would be imperfect). 

TL;DR Niall and Aurora’s romance is a warped mirror of the protagonists (Bluesey Pynch Jordeclan) romantic dynamics in that they show how a relationship built on a similar dynamic premise of desire to be understood could be horrifying if one stops respecting the other party as an autonomous being outside of the understanding they offer them.

[loving-family-poll]

Ultimate Incest Tournament - Round 1

The Raven Cycle fanart by xla-hainex on deviantart

Propaganda under the cut:

Merricat/Constance:

Mutual obsession, codependency and isolation sisters win

They happily isolate each other and follow these rules that nobody else understands, Merricat only cares about Constance and Constance would do anything for Merricat, no matter what Merricat does, and seemingly not out of fear, but out of love

When there's a possible love interest for Constance (who also happens to be said looks like their dad), Merricat wants him dead and in the end, even though Constance seemed more she could be a part of society, she chooses Merricat over him and over everyone else

Weird girls 4ever <3

Declan/Ronan:

Estranged brothers who beat the shit out of each other in parking lots, which is just UST central

We spend the first three and a half books (out of seven in total) thinking they mutually hate each other, until we realize that Declan has spent his entire life trying to protect and shelter Ronan

Declan's parentification is intense, made worse by their parents' early deaths, and his entire sense of self is cannibalized by his devotion to and resentment of his younger brother(s). Meanwhile, Ronan is a mess of anger and sublimated self-loathing, rebelling against Declan's authority as his legal guardian because he knows deep down that Declan is one person who is never going to give up on him, no matter how much he may fuck up or push him away

Declan doesn't even believe in god anymore but he still drives a 4-hour round-trip every week to go to mass with Ronan. The catholicism really jumps off the page, and with that comes HELLA daddy issues too, as both boys are canonically "made in their father's image" (the father, Niall, strongly and repeatedly paralleled with god) -- Ronan to the point of being an almost identical copy of him, so Declan/Ronan carries with it shades of Declan/Niall too

When they were small children, after Ronan (a supernatural entity not born in the traditional fashion) was brought into the family, their parents had decided to kill Ronan out of fear of what he would grow to be. They only didn't do so because when they went to carry out the deed, they found Declan cuddled up in bed with him, comforting him in his loneliness.

Declan shoots up an entire building at the mere insinuation that his brother is dead for good. Carried around his limp (alive?) body for a bit. Ronan is psychosexually obsessed with Declan's sex life + describes him unnecessarily erotically in his POVs. Both hot (CRUCIAL)

"Declan loved Ronan. And so Ronan lived."

[tigtree]

hello!!! *offers you this fic i’m writing in exchange for your trc goldfinch au please* (whenever you have the time <3)

- @you-know-i-get-itt

hello!! yes!! i’m so sorry this has taken me so long, life’s been a bitch LMAO 😭 and THANK YOU FOR THE FIC!!!!! i just read it and you have such an incredible writing style, i always devour your fics! if you ever end up writing more for it, please lmk!!

okay, buckle your seatbelt because this AU is so scuffed and still remains unfinished (though i’ve been working on bits and pieces over the last couple of weeks) so i’m not sure how much sense this is about to make? apologies in advance LMAO

okay, so the snippet shared beneath read more is from the very beginning of the story… or the end, depending on how you view it. either way, it’s the beginning of the fic i’m working (slowly) on for this AU.

an important note about this AU is that the concept of dreamers/dreams is completely thrown out, because i was struggling to make it fit, and so instead of the Barns being full of fantastical wonders, it’s art. (which i’d argue is a fantastical wonder anyway, but like. not magical in a fantasy sense)

There’s an underground secret market for artists here, and Niall happens to be a pretty prominent figure. The Barns are full of sculptures and paintings and all kinds of artwork, though many of these fellow artists aren’t happy with Niall- he gets himself into some trouble over stealing art and reselling for a whole lot more money than it should have been. He does all of this under a pseudonym, manages to keep his dirty work anonymous, until they figure him out.

One thing leads to another, and Niall Lynch is found dead in the driveway by his middle son.

Aurora has been sick for a while, and the stress of her husband’s death contributes to the rapid decline of her health, meaning Declan has to step in to care for his brothers while their mother is in hospital. Declan had been helping his father for years with the scam- though he’d been morally against it in many ways- and knows that ‘the bad people’ will be back to claim all of the artwork from the house. He therefore packs it all away, and sets it on the drive with a note begging them to just take it, and please leave his family out of this.

Ronan views Declan’s hurry to get rid of their Dad’s stuff as an attack, a dismissal of not just his grief but of their father’s life. He secretly takes a painting from one of the bags- The Goldfinch- and stashes it behind his bookshelf.

I’m really aware that I’ve typed so much so I’ll be brief with the rest Aurora dies, and the freaking art mafia people realise there’s a painting missing- The Goldfinch- and Declan decides they’re moving to DC to get away. Ronan refuses, and ends up staying with Gansey for a while. Through Gansey he meets Blue, Adam and Noah, and things feel okay- until he returns briefly to the Barns and finds a letter containing both Gansey’s address, and Declan and Matthew’s address. He panics, makes his way to DC, confides in Declan about it, finds out they’ve been having ominous happenings relating to the art. Declan decides they’re selling the Barns and townhouse to move further, Ronan isn’t happy with this. More stuff happens, he ends up trading the painting with the agreement that Declan and Matthew will not be bothered again.

While all of this is happening, Ronan and Gansey lowkey have something homoerotic going on, and Ronan is tits-over-toes in love with Adam.

i’ll shut up now, but the gist of it is that The Goldfinch is a sort of physical manifestation of Ronan’s grief- he’s unable to let go of his father, of the past, but eventually has built himself enough of a support system to finally let go of his father and properly grieve. there’s also a focus placed on the small choices that build up, over time, into something more- the Butterfly Effect, and all that.

——————

It’s cold, this time of year.

Ronan’s hands shake as he fumbles through the junk drawer, his fingers numbly brushing over various wires, receipts and plastic soldiers as he hunts for a lighter. He knows there will be one in here- the centerpiece candle on the dining table was lit on what must have amounted to hundreds of occasions over the years. Aurora would send one of the children to this drawer to dig out the Zippo lighter they kept handy for Sunday dinners and Easter lunches, and would allow the chosen child- for she kept the names on a rota- to light the candle.

The lightbulb in the kitchen has stubbornly refused to emit any light tonight, and so Ronan’s not sure what he catches his hand on. He retracts it from the drawer with a hissed Fuck, presses the cut to his mouth and unceremoniously kicks the counter. His entire soul feels disregulated, like it’s jittering around within the confines of his skin, pushing and pulling and desperately attempting to claw its way out.

It’s like the painting had been fused to his very existence, and- with it gone- he’s missing a vital organ.

He braves the drawer again, this time proving successful as his fingers tighten around the cold metal casing. The weight is familiar in his palm as he hurries back to the sitting room, dropping to his knees in front of the wood burner and flipping open the silver cap. When he reaches through the door, twisting his arm until he can catch the kindling with the flame, he catches a glimpse of his reflection on the dark glass.

He can’t quite believe it’s himself. He’s grown since he was last in this spot, learning to light the fire with his father at his side, and something inside of him lurches at the bags under his eyes and the hard lines of his face.

He breathes.

Pulls his hand from the catching flames.

Shuts the metal door.

Doesn’t think about punching the glass hard enough that it’ll shatter, take his mind off of the painting, send his brothers calling, let them all live under this one roof again and pretend nothing bad has ever happened to them. Let them pretend they’re kids, watching over one another while holding down the fort until their parents return from another business trip.

He doesn’t think about the painting.

Which is to say that he definitely does think about the painting.

It’s a parasite- or maybe Ronan is the parasite. Hungry. Unable to survive outside of its host, feeding off of the thrill and the regret and the addictive nausea that overwhelmed him whenever he pulled back the plastic wrapping and caught even the briefest glimpse of canvas.

The little bird had taunted him. Begged him to set it free. Unchain it from its perch and let it go.

Ronan’s phone buzzes somewhere behind him, but he doesn’t move. Doesn’t pull his eyes away from the flames.

It’s probably Gansey. Insomniac Gansey, unaware that Ronan has just ripped his heart from his chest and sold it for his brothers. Gansey, looking for someplace to ramble about kings or someone to hang out with or someone to tell him that he’s alive. Ronan had never understood Gansey’s occasional panic over whether he’s really here or not- if a person is capable of worrying that they might he dead, they probably aren’t.

Ronan kind of gets it now.

Still, he ignores the phone. He lets the heat settle on his face, draw out the dead chill from his bones, and thinks about what he’ll do tomorrow.

[lizpaige]

What's the Declan outside pov Pynch idea 👀

hi anon! thanks for the ask 💕 i am really interested in exploring declan’s evolving trust with adam so i have a couple vignettes in mind of him finding out pynch are together, him realizing how serious it is to ronan, him realizing how serious it is for adam and building trust with adam, etc. all silly and fluffy not a lot of angst, just declan having the same moments of realization that ronan got to have seeing jordeclan in the sweet metal sea.

I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS and i am brain dumping so i’m sorry, but basically i think that declan is super wary of othes knowing about the lynch family secret and questions adam’s intentions for being with ronan (before he really gets to know him/them). semi deep dive below with spoilers for the dreamer trilogy.

we never get to see declan learning about adam and ronan as a couple, but from trb adam is already screening ronan’s calls and answering declan so they have history/familiarity. in the beginning of cdth declan is still wary of adam but more from the perspective of knowing that if adam were to leave ronan (really leave him) that would destroy him. when ronan is unreachable, declan reminds him that he wanted to be a farmer and live a life with adam (i think encouraging ronan back to this life that declan approves of). when adam “leaves” ronan in greywaren, declan stands up for his brother basically calling adam out for giving up so easily after everything they’ve been through.

i just GAH i want more declan and adam content because they are both so protective of ronan and love him so much and they are also both bitchy assholes the passive aggression is off the charts!!!

[amethystroselily]

Me reading Jordan, Declan, and Matthew chapters in MI: I hope they live happily ever after together in Boston and build a proper life there and Declan and Jordan get married 🥰

Me reading Ronan and Hennessy chapters in MI: Oh my GOD I’m getting you out of there Hennessy. (Yeah, Ronan’s also being manipulated and it’s all going to fall apart very soon but at least he’s having a blast. That motherfucker loves eco-terrorism. It’s kind of his calling.)

[uncannycerulean]

Favourite Fics of June (TRC edition)

When it comes to our favourite horror movie boys, I mostly read short fics this month - all very fluffy and cute, because that's what my heart needs, okkkk??

TORCH all-caps by @lizpaige (G, 760 words, pynch, post-canon) The one in which Ronan dreams the world’s cutest kitten into existence. That’s all. Or is it?  Cute & domestic & also so in character. It’s like a snack-sized piece of pynch cuteness.

differentials by @lizpaige (G, 788 words, pynch, pre-TRC) Another one from the same series because they’re just SO GOOD! This one is both cute and incredibly in character, plus the book-ish vibes just fit the universe so well. Definitely one for a re-read. 

Cowboys are secretly frequently fond of each other by @vitchlit (T, 1.9k words, pynch, pre-TRC) I actually laughed out loud on the tube reading this. Just the right amounts of weirdness and slapstick. Also peak sassy Adam: “Are you having a stroke?” Honestly, it’s what everyone needs to read on their commute to work. 

Build a house where love can dwell (where love is found) by aprilxshowers (T, 20.8k words, pynch, non-magical AU) Five years after Aurora’s death Ronan lets Declan nag him into finally hiring someone to renovate the barns. His excitement immediately rises tenfold when he first meets the painter - the most beautiful man Ronan has ever seen. This is lovely and fluffy and great for a rainy day! 

[seavoice]

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.

[toast-the-unknowing]

A and Z for the Fanfic Writer Ask Meme please :)

A: Of the fanfic you’ve written, which is your favorite and why?

That's one of those questions where the answer depends on the day, doesn't it? Although I definitely have some that are more favorite than others. I think today I would say Careful the Tale You Tell. I really enjoyed getting to build out the magic and the atmosphere of that, I pulled in a bunch of my old favorite fantasy stories and fairy tales to create one world, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. I LOVED writing Opal in this one, SO MUCH, and I think that Adam and Ronan's arc turned out really well. I'm happy with all the big emotional moments and I'm still proud of how the storm scene turned out - I wanted it to be suspenseful, and eerie, and kinda creepy, and angsty, and at the heart of it to be about how much this little family loves each other and how hard they'll go to protect each other, and I think that all came through.

Plus, I managed to be extremely mean to Declan even though he isn't in very much of the story. I love getting to do that.

Z: Is there a story you’ve written that doesn’t seem to get much love?

Oh, for sure. I used to bounce around between a lot of small or old fandoms, mostly writing gen fic, often writing short ficlets or drabbles; I've had a lot of fics that didn't get the kind of attention I got once I started consistently writing a popular ship in one fandom. Even within my Raven Cycle fics, the stuff that isn't Pynch gets less attention. It is what it is! And it's the flip side of those times that I've dashed something off on a whim and then gotten a lot of love for it. Idk I think I was lucky to have the first experience as my formative fandom experience so I could just be pleasantly surprised by the latter experience.

Fanfic Writer Ask Meme

[squash1]

just think about how throughout trc the lynch brothers are family because of obligation. they each resent the others but still pretend that their familial ties are strong enough to keep them together. but by the end of tdt the lynch brothers each have personal reckonings where they realize the other brothers were doing what they could to survive and that their unhappiness was never the other brothers fault. declan realizes he loved ronan since the beginning and was not loved less because of ronans existence. ronan realizes what he is and the ways declan has tried to protect him. matthew finally gets his anger out and becomes truly autonomous. the brothers each let go of their assigned roles and by letting go of these roles the lynch brothers are no longer family because of blood. they are chosen family. they choose to come back to one another, renewed and open to building something stronger and healthier.

it gives very much “sisters by chance. friends by choice.”

[iammistressofmyfate]

Rating: Explicit

Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish, Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Declan Lynch/Jordan

Tags: Arranged Marriage, Slow Burn, Enemies to Lovers, Love at First Sight, Alternate Universe - Royalty, mentions of abuse, Political Alliances, Anal Sex, Masturbation, Anal Fingering, Ronan Lynch's Hand Kink, Frottage, Body Worship, Blow Jobs, Violence, Kidnapping, Character Death, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish, Adam Parrish Loves Ronan Lynch, Blood and Injury, Angst, Falling In Love, High Fantasy

Summary: Adam is a poor village boy with an extraordinary power in a village surrounded by others with extraordinary powers. In order to utilize these individuals, the king of the realm proposes a deal. One of these so called "Gifted" marries his brother. The person gets the protection of the crown, becomes royalty, the village is protected under the king, with the caveat that should the king call upon them, the Gifted of the village will lend their power to the king. Adam agrees to marry the Prince for the sake of his village and to avoid any skirmishes. Upon meeting the Prince and being shown nothing but glacial disdain, Adam resolves to make the best of his new position as a Prince, even if that means being in a loveless marriage. But not all is as it appears and Adam may be surprised at the secrets his new husband is keeping...

Excerpt:

Adam sat atop Ember, looking out at the first sight of the sea from the road they were taking to Lindenmere. Spring had finally arrived and though there was still a chill in the air, Adam felt awake. 

He, Ronan, and their small retinue had arrived at their first village stop on their way to Ronan’s family homestead. It was a fishing village, closer to the sea, with a harbor. It was all cobblestone and whitewashed buildings with slate roofs. A richer village than Adam’s had been.

Adam took in the sights and sounds and smells. Everything was salt and ozone, the air still chilly with the last bits of winter. People were talking in the streets, children running past them, laughing. Adam rode Ember carefully through the streets, following Ronan on Rálach. 

[Chapter 7]

[Chapter 8]

[Chapter 1]

[catholic-character-tournament]

Round 2 - Side A

Propaganda below ⬇️

Ronan Lynch

Uhh fun fact he saw the devil flash his father once, and that's one of the reasons he goes to church on Sundays <3

context for this scene from book 2: ronan is in church with his older brother declan, younger brother matthew, and ghost friend noah "Joseph Kavinsky isn’t someone I want you being around,” Declan added. “Don’t snort. I’m serious.” Ronan merely invested a look with as much contempt as he could muster. A lady reached over the top of Noah to pat Matthew’s head fondly before continuing down the aisle. She didn’t seem to care that he was fifteen, which was all right, because he didn’t, either. Both Ronan and Declan observed this interaction with the pleased expressions of parents watching their prodigy at work. Declan repeated, “Like, actually dangerous.” Sometimes, Declan seemed to think that being a year older gave him special knowledge of the seedier side of Henrietta. What he meant was, did Ronan know that Kavinsky was a cokehead. In his ear, Noah whispered, “Is crack the same thing as speed?” Ronan didn’t answer. He didn’t think it was a very church-appropriate conversation. “I know you think you’re a punk,” Declan said. “But you aren’t nearly as bad ass as you think you are.” “Oh, go to hell,” Ronan snapped, just as the altar boys broached the rear doors. “Guys,” Matthew pleaded. “Be holy.”

Gay Catholic streetracing farmer. Consumed by catholic guilt NOT because of the gay thing but because he can Create things in a way he thinks should be only God's business. Will literally roll up to mass on sunday morning still drunk and bloody.

THIS GOTH KID IS LITERALLY GOD. This is a god trapped in the body of a Catholic teen and if he ever stopped feeling Catholic guilt he’d end the world!!. How is your confession every week that you creating a whole new being? Babygirl the God is coming from inside the house

eldritch entity from beyond the mortal plane wants to be a Real Human Boy, becomes a real (ish!) human (ish!) boy, goes to mass every sunday

Gay boy got his crush an apartment above his church so he could have his two favorite things in one place

gay. I'm not caught up the the series but I went through the tag when the latest book came out and I remember seeing a quote that said he worried if his boyfriend would make it to heaven when he dies because of his agnostic tendencies.

Kid is like a dream warlock who creates psychic horrors and never goes to confession because why would he? and he’s gay

There are no words

basically ronan's powers are inherited from his dead father niall and it means he can bring anything from a dream into real life. so he's got this whole crisis about whether he is a living piece of blasphemy because men are not meant to have the powers of gods or whether he literally is god. which is not acceptable to him for a number of reasons but mostly because he hates himself. his love interest's name is adam and adam lives in a small apartment above a church which the book says focuses the objects of his worship neatly into one building. I love them both dearly. also, this entire page makes me feel like I'm going insane. Ronan Lynch believed in heaven and hell. Once, he’d seen the devil. It had been a low, late morning at the Barns when the sun had burned off the mist and then burned off the chill and then burned the edges off the ground until everything shimmered with heat. It never got hot in those protected fields, but that morning, the air sweated with it. Ronan had never seen cattle pant before. All of the cows heaved and stuck their tongues out as they frothed with the heat. His mother sent Ronan to put them in the shade of the cattle barn. Ronan had gone to the searing metal gate, and as he did, he’d glimpsed his father, already in the barn. Four yards away from him had stood a red man. He was not truly red, but the burned orange of a fire ant. And he was not truly a man, because of the horns and the hooves. Ronan remembered the alienness of the creature, how real it had been. Every costume in the world had gotten it wrong; every drawing in every comic book. They’d all forgotten that the devil was an animal. Looking at the red man, Ronan had been struck by the intricacy of the body, how many miraculous pieces moved smoothly in harmony, no different than his own. Niall Lynch had had a gun in hand — the Lynches had an enormous number of guns of all sizes — and just as Ronan had opened the gate, his father had shot the thing about thirteen times in the head. With a shake of its horns, the unharmed devil had presented its genitalia to Niall Lynch before bounding off. It was an image that had yet to leave Ronan. And so Ronan became a reverse evangelist. The truth burst and grew inside him, and it was laid upon him to share it with no one. No one was meant to see hell before they get there. No one should have to live with the devil. So many homilies on faith were ruined once you no longer required it for belief.

Friar Tuck

If you use the picture of furry friar tuck from the Disney Robin Hood, bless you 🙏

[cabeswaterdrowned]

was musing about some parallels between Jordan and Adam + Jordan and Blue re: wanting autonomy or wanting something more / to be recognized as special individually rather than as part of either a group of women where you have to play the level headed or non magical one or being in the shadow of one specific person who’s your best friend… and that got me thinking about the triangulated structures of early Blue-Adam-Gansey and Declan-Jordan-Hennessy. Jordan and Adam both feel pulled towards a connection with Declan and Blue partly because those characters are outsiders to their tight knit group where they play a specific role of providing logic or a soothing (thinking of Ronan’s mention of Adam serving as a calming presence and attributing seeing less of Gansey on fire to that) effect (and I would similarly say that Hennessy kind of romanticizes/exaggerates these traits in Jordan in narration like Gansey does with Adam in cdth / trb) and also are looking at them separate to Hennessy/Gansey (from their pov because that doesn’t end up being true for Blue a lot of the time, it is true for Declan) and that’s inverted with Declan and Blue who are the less magical or non magical members of magical families and want a connection outside of that, to someone normal (although neither Jordan nor Adam it turns out actually is). So in both of these dynamic structures you have a character B who desires autonomy and fears their intense codependent dynamic with a character C who they love / is the person most important to them at this point will mean they don’t get to have that, and character A is appealing to them as a potential escape from C, a relationship where they can get the connection they desire without having to compromise on that autonomy. 

It’s interesting to look at those similarities and then think about how differently the trajectories of Jordeclan and Bluedam were. Jordan and Declan are first drawn to each other partially as escapes from the complicated relationships they have with other people and roles they tend to fall into but fall in love with each other as people on their own merit, and build something that lasts because of it. With Bluedam I’m honestly not that interested in arguing for whether they were or weren’t ever in love that would be a different post / you can draw those lines for yourself, but the way they process their feelings for each other never breaks out of that seeking escape / validation pattern, at least not while they’re dating. 

I feel like there are a few different factors you could point to as reasons they end up so differently. The first and most obvious one is that because for a lot of td3 the characters are geographically separated, Jordan in MI is distanced from Hennessy and the other doubles for the first time and simultaneously missing Hennessy and mourning the girls and getting to explore her own freedom, with and without (the car theft lol) Declan. When she and Declan are together they can truly focus on each other and their developing feelings. It would be interesting to see how that would be different if Hennessy were in Boston with them because I think that could complicate the arc. It also helps that Hennessy and Declan genuinely have subzero interest in each other outside of the context of Jordan, much less messy (Ik that’s ironic to say about anything concerning Jordan/Hennessy but yeah in this context simples things up xd). As opposed to Blue and Gansey obviously developing strong feelings and starting to fall in love during this time, Declan fulfills Jordan’s need to be seen as real detached from Hennessy while Blue can’t fulfill Adam’s need to be seen as / feel like an equal to Gansey. (what Adam’s seeking there also is slightly dehumanizing to Blue in a way that what Jordan’s seeking from Declan isn’t to him though, I think that’s important to keep in mind. And in taking that approach he’s going to fail to give Blue what she needs which is to not be seen/treated as a useful object the way she feels she sometimes is in 300 fox way). 

However I think the biggest contributing factor is some of the key differences between Jordan and Adam, namely the fact that Jordan is much more emotionally self aware than Adam is about these dynamics and what she wants from them (I mean it isn’t difficult to be more emotionally self aware than Adam, but still). To be clear Jordan’s pov of Hennessy is definitely not wholly reliable and she tends to want to see the best in her to a point of denial sometimes, but when it comes to Her feelings Jordan knows how much she loves Hennessy while also wanting to be her own person outside of her, knows when that love for her drives her actions and knows that she does want to preserve a version of their relationship even if things can’t be the same. She has doubts about how possible that is or if she should continue to strive for that when she learns Hennessy hasn’t been honest with her about things as important as their memories of Jay or when Hennessy is cruel/pushing her away, however she isn’t in denial about the feelings themselves in the same way. This allows her greater success with navigating and pursuing the other people and things she wants (Adam also gets there but he needs to purposefully detach a little in order to do that, to break out of that ‘everything in my head is so tangled’ (said to Cabeswater but imo very applicable to all of his relationships and wants and how he interacts with them in the Dream thieves). 

Because Adam at that point in trc is someone who doesn’t really believe in love and certainly not it’s importance, and who wants to be and see himself as someone perfectly logical and whose actions are influenced by nothing but cold logic (lmfao.) he really can’t be honest about what he’s doing in the same way, because that would mean acknowledging in the first place that he loves Gansey and that this drives a lot of his actions (see; not believing in Glendower but being willing to dedicate so much time and energy to the search for Gansey’s sake, forgiving him when he’s thoughtlessly classist and that hurts him, literally being willing to sacrifice his autonomy for him yet turning around and saying that waking the line wasn’t about Gansey look at what I do not what I say etc.). It’s not that his feelings for Blue aren’t real independently from Gansey and also some of how he feels about Gansey is not about Gansey but about how he feels about society/himself, and then some of the latter gets translated to his feelings for Blue / the lense he views her through so it’s a cycle (lol). But basically Adam is pulled between impulses to escape Gansey and stay with him at all cost, imo, and not really honest with himself about either impulse but especially not the latter because he can’t be honest with himself about the root emotions. Here I actually think he’s more like Hennessy than Jordan re: the lines about Hennessy being simultaneously scared of Jordan leaving her and being her own person and scared that she’ll stay with her ‘forever and ever’ while also wanting it so much… they both deeply hate themselves and feel unworthy of love from someone they view as so much better/purer than they are. There’s definitely more to be dissected here but I think I’d need to reread both series again for that so as of right now these are my thoughts. re: Declan-Jordan-Hennessy and early Bluedansey + Jodanessy and Adansey parallels/anti-parallels 

[annabethvicit]

ok i’ve marinated and greywaren was good, but i am really disappointed in how the emotional storylines and character arcs were wrapped up. it felt almost lazy to me if that makes sense? there was so much compelling build up for the brothers in the first two books and then we got here and barely saw matthew, didn’t go as in-depth into ronan’s whole psyche and emotions as we could have, and had declan’s arc wrap-up in a simple “turns out niall loved him all along” !! like i enjoyed the book, had a good time reading etc etc however i really wish that the attention to detail and the complex emotional arcs had carried through a little bit more because they were SO well done initially and i feel like we could have gotten so much MORE with the endings.