#this one is...excessively rambly and disjointed im v sorry BUT have a lot of fun w/ the cambion there's SO much we've talked about w/ ronan

[happikattwuzheere]

im being deeply unproductive today, but in my defense i got a set of several complex pictures for the video project done last night, and i still have to actually assemble the files for editing and ill get to that but first let’s bust through some more of this backlog of deer boy au sketches and talk about ronan this time 

this is a LONG one probably, and also, yknow, because its ronan and esp because as you may have noticed he’s not exactly human in this au, there’s gonna be some discussion here of good ole ronan lynch angst-with-regards-to-his-existence-and-religion, so like, heads up there? and. discussion of like. some very sad things, but very very briefly. less discussion and more mention of them. look its ronan idk what to tell you aside from i have at least managed to avoid mentioning kavinsky for now so its not as bad as it could be anyway

(this is probably extremely rambly even for me, im so sorry. i can explain any number of things mentioned here in more detail if anyone would like) 

SO. ronan’s a cambion, at least by dnd terminology, idk how that term gets used in other contexts but the point here is he’s half-human and half-demon, BUT, v important to explain, even tho the characters don’t initially know this and it’s something they work out over time, demons are not necessarily devils; or, more accurately, there’s a category of creature that is not a fey but is somewhat fey-adjacent, follows their own very different set of rules to fey law and are reliant on ley lines in ways similar to a lot of fey beings and spaces, and that category of creatures was granted the name “demons” because that word already exists and this type of creature’s so misunderstood that people mistook them for devils. Whether the biblical demon also exists in this au i havent decided on and dont much plan to because its not super relevant 

BUT. taking inspiration from the horrible bee from canon, demons are, essentially, beings that are created due to a high degree of tragedy on a ley line, and the rules they operate by as well as their motivations are determined by the shape of that tragedy which created them. for example: the hornet demon from the books would be an example of what happens due to violence and bloodshed; it was born of blood shed in anger and life wrongly taken and as a result it exists only to destroy. however, not all demons are evil. example: take, say, a succubus (no stay with me hold on), like the one that niall lynch hooked up with made a deal with over in ireland one day. 

a succubus in this sense is a demon which is born of miscarriage; and they’re Like That because there, the tragedy is not one of destruction, but of lost potential and a life that never came to be. so a succubus is driven to make up for that lost potential in the form of, yknow, making another baby happen, 

and its that power of potential that is also why ronan’s got power over dreams still, it’s aaaall about creation and potential. and his mother, who he never actually met, she hecked off but niall kept the baby, wasn’t evil. just. operating on a different morality system but one which had no interest in hurting anybody. she’s still kicking around in ireland somewhere

RONAN meanwhile still has his two brothers, haven’t figured out yet if matthew’s still a dream thing or not, but. niall never got around to explaining how the demon thing worked before dying because it’s niall he’s terrible at explaining things. but ronan started being able to shapeshift p young--he’s got a fully human form, a fully demonic form, and a form that’s generally called hybrid but really he can shift to anywhere along the spectrum or just pop the wings or the tail out etc etc etc. his brothers both know ronan’s not human, its a family secret, its all chill, except then one day ronan shifts out the wings to help save a baby bird that fell out of a tree and someone outside the family sees that happen and from there things just get real bad and the lynches have to leave ireland in a hurry 

ronan’s demonic form actually ends up being strongly influenced by his own opinion of himself as he grows up; the church has him filled with enough doubt that he grows the horns and becomes more hulking and frightening and all that jazz, and he suspects that he would be burned or expelled from a church’s grounds if he were to shift forms on sacred ground, so he never tries it (he would not, because, as was previously stated, his mother isnt evil, but he doesnt know that) and he just. he hides it real hard. especially after niall gets himself murdered before ronan can finally just ASK about his mother

but! before that happens he meets gansey, who has a lot of interest in the fey and a theory that’s not quite right but is on the right track about demons being some poorly understood class of fey rather than something evil and that gives ronan a lot of hope for a while

yknow until he sees how much iron effs up someone who’s even got a LITTLE fey blood in them when adam gets shot and how when ronan holds that same arrowhead that put adam in so much pain it doesn’t hurt at all, rip 

he tells them that he’s a cambion well before he shows them the alt forms because there’s a point where he feels that they ought to know esp since ronan’s back to existential dread over what exactly he is, it’s kavinsky who ends up forcing him to shift in front of them for the first time, the whole kavinsky thing’s gonna DEFINITELY take at least one post all on its own a lot happens there, but for now: this is why ronan knew that pryderi wasn’t a normal deer (that and also because pryderi is a white tailed deer, which dont exist in england, so ronan was like, thats. thats not a real animal thats gotta be a fey) and also leads to some fun between him and noah because noah, unbeknownst to ronan, has decided that he and ronan are in fact engaged in a game of chicken to see who gets caught/outed for what they really are first. 

(ronan and gansey dont know what kind of fey noah is exactly. ronan assumes he’s something weak like a brownie. noah is definitely not a brownie) 

uhhh any more thoughtsssss 

last picture’s unfinished because idk why ronan’s fully demonic form is so hard for me to DRAW but he’s shaped roughly like beast from the disney movie, except as a big bird monster. also if ur someone he likes and you sleep using him as a pillow it’ll be the best sleep of your life w/ really good dreams and ronan also sleeps v well, its a thing that happens, ronan is in fact the best pillow