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is this a safe space to admit i’ve always read “hey tiger” in the same manner as a dad coming to check on his kid after a screaming argument with a “hey, buddy” or should i vanish

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the raven cycle isn’t really a book series that i like its more a disease that i have

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been hearing rumors that the "i'm always straight" lines may have been cut from the GN and IF that is true, I expect everyone will be super mad about that--and ngl i'd mourn the loss of it too because it has become iconic to me

But. i can't believe i'm playing devils advocate for this, BUT it is not entirely unreasonable for an adaptation of this work to decide it does not want to reference Ronan's sexuality yet......coming to terms with his sexuality is (one) part of his arc in the 2nd book. Adam Parrish being ~the 2nd secret he doesn't want to admit to himself~ , Ronan's catholic guilt homoerotic nightmares and the like, all characterize his sexuality as something he might vaguely be aware of but seriously struggles to openly admit. I don't think he even uses the word gay or any other word to describe himself in the whole series? (unless I'm forgetting something?)

So, idk, it's not unreasonable to want the (hypothetical) audience to also not be aware of it until Ronan is forced to directly grapple with his identity next book.

i think this is one of those things that has become very dear to the fandom over time, but if i look at it objectively without my feelings, i just.....i do understand why someone could conceivably decide that this off-handed bitchy "he's gay btw" joke is not of dire importance for the sanctity of the story 😭 in the 'pros don't outweigh the cons' sort of way....

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my never ending agony w/ the dreamer trilogy is it is truly full of so many scenes and concepts that i really really like and find super compelling and emotionally resonant. but i don't know how to get to those things that i like without going through all the many OTHER things that i really really don't like. and they arent small things so i cant just pretend they arent there or work my way around them with headcanons. and what am i supposed to do with that??? suffer??????????

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if anyone's is still wondering I finally found an archived post about this!!

hey so i've heard off-handedly mentioned several times that maggie stiev was suffering through some kind of illness while writing the raven king... does anyone have any source on that or screenshots of when/where she talked about it? i'm really curious about what happened but like, with how rumors spread in fandom circles I was hoping for something more than vague word-of-mouth details?

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hey so i've heard off-handedly mentioned several times that maggie stiev was suffering through some kind of illness while writing the raven king... does anyone have any source on that or screenshots of when/where she talked about it? i'm really curious about what happened but like, with how rumors spread in fandom circles I was hoping for something more than vague word-of-mouth details?

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“weird and unhealthy relationship that cant be categorized neatly as sexual or romantic or platonic but has a defining air of devotion and obsession to it” wins sound of the summer for the 13th year in a row

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god is testing my patience tell me why every social media algorithm in the world is convinced that the raven cycle is the same thing as a*l f*r t*e g*me and fucking ma*raders I DONT WANT THEM STOP RECOMMENDING THEM TO ME LET ME RAVEN POST IN PEACE LEAVE ME ALONEEEEEE

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confession, my biggest motive for this reread is that i dont remember clearly what happened in the raven king bc its the only installment i only read once, but i remember being really unhappy with it and not satisfied at all. which was so at odds with the UNBELIEVABLE EXTENT that i was attached to the series while reading through it that it resulted in this weird cloud of dissonance that just ping pongs around in my head every couple months. everytime i thought about the raven cycle i felt this almost painful hollow feeling in my chest made of a mix of frustration and sadness and longing. for what, i dont know, bc i dont know how i wanted the series to end, what could possibly feel like enough payoff to all the build up, and i rly wanted the last intallment to show me what i didnt know i wanted, and when it Really didnt i held a grudge and couldnt deal with it.

and anyway, its legit maddening. ive never been THIS upset about a book, it was actually causing long periods of dispondent anxious sadness the kind where i cant remember why im upset, its just kind of sits in the pit of my stomach (and makes me spiral about other things). i know it was largely because i just couldnt understand WHY the choices were made the way they were. i felt like i needed to reread it with my expectations in check so i could try to understand wtf even happened in it. like.....i am so desperate to talk myself into, if not loving, at least being more at peace with this series and the direction it took.

when i was reading the series the first time about ganseys looming death, i was thinking "the way this is setting up, it really feels like gansey SHOULD die at the end to be narrativley satisfying, the farther we go the more it feels like stopping it is impossible without it feeling cheap and abrupt.....but i would really really like to be convinced otherwise. id do anything frankly to be convinced otherwise." and hilariously, that feeling is really similar to my attitude towards trk and td3....i feel like i just think these books were not well executed and flawed in so many of their core concepts/conclusions, but i would really REALLY like to find a way to convince myself otherwise. so i can just think about the characters fondly instead of only being sad/frustrated when i remember them. idk why this series has made me so mentally ill. i wish i could find a replacement that ticks the same boxes in my brain that doesnt also carry so much baggage with it but alas i have yet to find it so here i am!! rereading this trying to be a generous and understanding as possible (and i will probably not fully succeed, but at least i want to have a more clear understand of WHAT specifically did and didn't work for me, and more importantly why. i will never be able to move on until i figure it out.)

i am not proof reading this and i dont know if i even know what im trying to say, u just get my word vomit <3

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i've come across a puzzling amount of people who seem to think that time in the dream thieves when ronan described a memory of seeing his dad fighting the (butt ass naked) "devil" in their backyard as being a genuine appearance of the devil.

gang. my brothers in christ. there are two possibilities here

1: neil lynch, who is also a dreamer and also at least somewhat catholic, fucked up and let one of his nightmares get away from him

or 2: the actual Devil(tm) from The Bible(tm) made a genuine cameo appearance, solely so it could fist fight ronan's dad with its dick out

I mean. I guess we'll never know.

I suppose it's weird that ronan seems to have taken this memory seriously, but I rly think we can chalk this up to the fact that at that point in his life he was still fully catholic and so all of his understanding of magic is filtered through catholic logic e.g if his dream magic isn't from god, then it might be evil and make him evil by extension. it's not unreasonable for him to fear any manifestation of the devil might very well be connected to the literal devil. he can't be sure when he doesn't understand his dream magic. i guess this is headcanon, but like. which scenario do u think is more likely. The Devil from The Bible casually appeared once and never again, or dream magic+what catholic guilt does to a mf????

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wait i was just thinking about this very topic yesterday. listen i DO think adam parrish could potentially become an avatar, but i dont see what connection he'd have to buried. he is incredibly web coded to me. not having control of his life/self is his biggest driving fear. selling his autonomy to a Weird Entity just to desperately grasp at the "choice" of giving it away himself was the literal climax of book 1. I'm telling you the web is beelining it for this guy.

Would Adam Parrish from The Raven Cycle be an avatar of the Buried

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so i am rereading the raven cycle bc I guess I want to ruin my life again or w/e

i will say i do appreciate the character set ups in book 1 more on a re-read, i remember the 1st time i read/listened to raven boys i was so name blind i couldn't even remember how many boys there were lol

I didn't realize just how much I didn't remember about the Plot. I remembered a lot of individual scenes of emotional drama that stuck with me, not so much the threads connecting them. I am currently on dream thieves which i remember being my favorite. I think i mainly really liked kavinsky as an antagonist and ronan's climax w him. i was also rly invested in the gansey/adam angst (but then, at the time it was because i was anticipating the eventual catharsis of their painful conflict being like.....resolved, at least a little......which i now know It Will Not Be, so much as it will instead be very gently and cautiously pushed under a rug. in a somewhat naive hope of not being stepped on again)

i'm also trying to pay more attention to Blue this time around bc i have forgotten the most about her

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Speaking of blood over bright haven, I feel like that twist should have been obvious but I am notoriously so so bad at predicting any twists ever so yeah that def threw me, i haven't been able to sit and just read this much for a long time.

but i can't even imagine how this problem could be solved. I went into this blind, so it could be a tragedy for all I know.

I really don't see how one could respond to this other than to start mass murdering mages, which wouldn't really be a nice fix, more of a "there's literally nothing else you can do here" last resort.

like, even if you managed to show the truth to the entire society, this society is so completely lost in their religion-fueled-racism sauce I can't imagine how it would realistically do that much? I'm sure some would freak out, but most would easily cope with "no this is merely hallucination from the devil" type of explanations, and even if they were made to believe it, they'd just double down/move the goal posts with some kind of "well god clearly wanted us to cleanse the world of sinners that's why he gave us this magic, so it's actually necessary. and good that we're grinding all of those people into spaghetti."

as has been demonstrated to us, the human ego cannot easily accept that has been in the wrong in such a massive unfixable way

Like, the dehumanization and racism is so thorough and cartoonishly evil, a society this far gone isn't going to be capable of simply shedding everything they internalized their whole life about how the world works--especially when it's mainly held up by the word of God which is neither required to be rational or moral. That kind of thing takes so much time to deprogram. I truly have no idea how this book is going to resolve itself (realistically)

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I'm reading Blood Over Bright Haven and I have been really into it, heavy-handedness aside, but I have to say I am so incredibly Not On Board with the idea of this becoming a romance, and unless something completely crazy happens i am REALLY struggling to imagine how any amount of Sciona Redmption Arc-ing is going to make it feel better. And I already felt that way BEFORE the big twist reveal about magic.

The narrative has been doing that ""chemistry hinting"" thing since they met and i have never been excited about it. Thomil has only had two POV chapters and I really am struggling to click with how/when/why he would have started to fall for her in that way when she had never successfully gone a week without some reminding him how she couldn't help view him as inherently lesser. like. you notice her racism all the time. bro. how are you like "I made the mistake of trusting her :(" like, how tho.

I think Sciona is a great character and I think they should be allies but god please just let them both accept that this relationship cannot and should not be salvaged into a romance

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tbqh i didn't need kevin r free to go quite that hard on the 'something in me broke' line but here we are

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i love murderbot so much its unreal

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i think it is extremely funny the twist villain of The Atlas Six is literally just like. a pokemon villain

anyway i am trying to remind myself that i do not have to finish books that im not into, and i spent the entire book thinking "idk if im into this enough to finish, ill give it one more chapter" and just did that all the way through. still dont know if i liked it