#and ronan does it before they find cabeswater and adam does it before they find out cabeswater is dying so like... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

spritelysprites · 3 years

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blue sargent is so compassionate, and I think a lot of the fandom overlooks that because it's funnier to make her judgey or angry all the time. there's obviously no reason why they should spend any amount of time thinking about a female character when there are all these hot traumatised boys over here they can project onto and fetishize, and blue is complicated and nuanced enough as a character that people just don't get her.

(also, a lot of the readers who idolise softboi adam parrish and their version of ronan with all the edges sanded off are the exact sort of people who would have seen blue and treated her like a novelty item or something strange and foreign, but that's another discussion.)

is she judgemental? absolutely. she judges those raven boys on sight so many times. but it's from learned experience and it's to protect herself from hoping for things she can't have (money, a way out of henrietta, a future with trees and stars as far as the eye can see, for those raven boys at nino's to see her as a person rather than someone whose time they can buy). she's all about integrity and respect, and she is quick to judge when she doesn't feel respected. she doesn't feel that she gets respect in her own home, being the only non-psychic (the only one who isn't special in some way), and she searches for it in other areas of her life.

but the thing is, when others don't treat her with respect, she demands it from them. she fights with orla. she snaps at that man who tells her she has nice legs. she tells gansey that she is not a prostitute, and she is upset when gansey implies her goal of community college is something unworthy.

this is the sort of thing a lot of fans look at and go, "oh, it's because she's an angry feminist who likes making a big deal out of her social status. boring." and that's a tragedy.

blue is extremely compassionate. most of the parts in the books where a character looks at another character and sees something more human and sympathetic than other characters do, it's from her perspective. she sees ronan's attempts to pretend the barns didn't matter to him, and sees how much it does matter. she sees gansey's anxiety before anyone else in the books, except maybe noah, and tries to empathise. she is the one who sees the magic in these places they explore with wonder and reverence every time as the others get used to the idea of miracles.

blue feels like she's the only normal one, and a lot of her internal struggle (when she's not thinking about gansey's death) has to do with the fact that everyone around her slowly grows more magical while she feels left behind. she finds a piece of herself in the forest and holds onto it, thrilled to be a part of something as huge and magical as the discovery of cabeswater, all the while convinced that she can't really be a part of the magic around her.

she doesn't discover her father's magic until the last book, and it's never properly explored. I've never seen any piece of meta or fanfiction exploring that, or even mentioning it. a lot of people like to pretend it didn't happen and she's just touchy and emotional for no reason. she's not, in case you're wondering. that's the misogyny talking.

blue deals with emotions in a way I haven't seen in any other character: she feels them, she acknowledges them, she cries if she needs to, and then she makes her decision about what to do.

she doesn't like messy emotions, but she's willing to let herself feel them if it means moving past them. she wasn't taught to hide her tears or be ashamed of her emotions like a lot of people are, and it shows in moments of stress.

fans like to make fun of her for talking about her economic status and comparing her to adam. adam doesn't allow others to pay for him because he wants to be the one to save himself. blue doesn't allow others to pay for her because she doesn't feel that they respect or understand her. she's usually right, too. the first time we see gansey offering to pay for her, he's being oblivious and ignorant. it's not his fault, given the environment he was raised in, and he tries very hard over the course of the series to unlearn that kind of thinking, but he made assumptions about her and she didn't feel heard. comparing adam to blue is useless and gets us into some political conversation, but living paycheck to paycheck and living on a tight budget both suck and affect people for years afterwards. both situations are stressful and growing up in households where money is tight leaves an impression in children well into adulthood. just because one person has it worse doesn't mean both situations don't suck.

so what I'm trying to say is, please stop ignoring blue. she may not be your perfect feminist icon, but she's messy and she's real and she deserves better.

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piningeddiediaz · 3 years

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What do you like about Pynch?

hi! anon, I love this question. I stared at it for a bit not really sure how to put it into words tbh but I'll try.

my favourite dynamic is always 'saw the worst parts of you and loved you anyway'. pynch weren't exactly enemies-friends-to-lovers but they were, imo, a mellowed version of it. they saw the bad, shitty, would-put-anyone-else-off side of each other first, and not only loved each other despite it but because of it. so much of ronan's internal conflict was the religious guilt associated with his powers, him not understanding his powers and sometimes thinking of it as a curse. and then you contrast it with adam; he is constantly awed by ronan's abilities. adam parrish, logical to a fault, "a scientist" who only believes in things when he has proof, barely takes a second to believe ronan can take things out of his dreams, or ronan dreamt his baby brother, or ronan dreamt the magical sentient forest he is attached to. why? because it's ronan, because to adam ronan is magic.

similarly, adam is stubborn and guarded and prideful. he doesnt think he is capable of love - either giving or receiving - because he never witnessed it himself. he thinks of himself as destructive. as someone unworthy. someone not special. but everytime ronan talks about Adam it's like he is describing the eighth wonder of the world. neither of them ignore each other's flaws (on the contrary, they constantly call each other out) but they also understand each other. accept each other. support each other. ronan understands adam's need to leave, as much as he believes killing himself for aglionby is stupid. adam understands ronan's contempt for school, or his need to street race, or his need to be at the barns. they don't necessarily agree with each other, but they understand each other. no other person in the series has displayed this: gansey takes adam's refusal to move in with him or take help from him personally, takes ronan's refusal to go to school as some kind of cry for attention. everyone in the series treats the two of them as something/someone to be fixed so that they fit the traditional idea of 'stable and healthy' but the two of them understand in their own way that they both have this trauma that can't be fixed. they both have something to prove, and they support each other through it.

ronan finds out about aglionby increasing fees before adam himself does, and immediately figures out adam wont be able to afford it. he tries to help without ever taking any credit for it (unlike someone who had to mention paying adam's hospital bill at a very vulnerable moment). he notices adam's dry hands and dreams him hand cream. he keeps adam company at boyds or st agnes. and through it all he never ever expects anything in return. he understands that adam only takes what he can give back, and he doesnt have a lot to give back, so he takes without making it feel like an obligation. but Adam does give back. he makes time in his very busy schedule to help ronan at the barns. he makes cabeswater play ronan's shitty music to see him smile. he lets ronan take, and he lets himself accept. they just. they balance each other out.

to me, that is what love is. seeing the bad parts, the parts other people may not like and loving them anyway, not because it is an obligation or whatever, but because it is what makes them them. you know them, you accept them, and you help them grow. love is memorising facts about harvard despite you having no desire or attraction towards education because it would make him feel better. love is pushing yourself to the limits to make sure he is okay even though he was acting like an asshole with you. love is making a home for yourself in the place he loves the most, of promising to come back even though before him all you wanted to do was leave. they love each other on purpose.

#it's the kind of love i have always wanted and reading it made me believe maybe one day I will find it too #sorry anon if i gave wayy more detail than you wanted #i just really really love them #thank you for asking me i loved this question!#anon #asks #pynch #adam parrish #ronan lynch #trc #also sorry for the side gansey comments I promise I don't hate him but some of the stuff he does... brings me very close to hate....

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in-a-pynch · 3 years

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Pynch! Plant! Dads! Headcanon!

adam never having house plants growing up because *obviously*

but then gansey bashfully gives adam a pothos plant as a housewarming/peacemaking gift once he moves into st. agnes

adam, who never does anything halfway, immediately checks out books from the school library on how to care for houseplants

adam realizing that he is capable of being gentle and caring through his small (but quickly growing) houseplant collection, and using this to counter his insecurities regarding becoming like his father

adam returning home late from work absolutely exhausted but still hellbent on watering and talking to every single plant before bedtime

adam eventually acquiring so many plants that he has to develop a schedule of which plants he gives attention to on different days to make sure he is being fair

ronan finding out adam talks to his plants one night when he follows adam back to the church after a fight and overhears adam muttering to his pilea about his dumbass, stubborn boyfriend who he loves but often wants to strangle

ronan absolutely melting at this, but not letting on that he knows because he doesn’t want adam to be self-conscious about it and stop

from then on, when ronan spends the night at st agnes, he often wakes up the next morning with funny little plants cupped in his hands that couldn’t be found in any of adam’s many many botany books

they put all of the unidentified plants on one table in the middle of the apartment, they call that section mini-cabeswater

ronan buying a bunch of plants for himself, figuring that if he can farm he can certainly take care of a house plant

ronan being undeniably, irrefutably wrong about this fact

adam having to rescue all of ronan’s houseplants from the Barns and Monmouth because they’re dying ro

adam bringing *all of* the plants to college (because he can’t just pick favorites, ronan) and them basically taking over his half of the dorm

the plants reminding adam of cabeswater in a way that aches a little inside his chest and behind his deaf ear

one of adam’s new friends seeing his ridiculous plant collection and forcing him to join the botany club with them

adam secretly adoring it even though he pretends he doesn’t

ronan sometimes mailing adam new little plant samples he dreamed up with ridiculous notes in latin

adam’s friends being infinitely curious about The Boyfriend: Mysterious Giver of Plants but only being able to get out of adam that he’s A Farmer™️ and they went to high school together

adam’s botanist friends asking too many questions about where adam’s boyfriend gets all these weird plants that no one can identify and adam blurting out that ronan is a “rare plant collector”

adam telling ronan this over winter break and his ears turning pink as ronan laughs until his stomach hurts

adam being thankful for all the latin he learned in high school bc it means he can make up authentic sounding scientific names for the “rare” plants on the spot

ronan coming up to visit adam at school for the first time and all of adam’s friends expecting A Farmer™️ and instead getting a goth boy with daddy issues and a bunch of religious guilt

ronan softening the blow by bringing a bunch of weird plants he had gotten from sources so secret that if i told you i would have to kill you ((lynch stop threatening my friends)) and also a raven named chainsaw??

in adam’s junior year, ronan and his obsession with weird, dead, romantic languages decides to send adam messages in victorian flower language

this is fine and sweet up until the point that adam’s friends figure it out and ronan decides to send increasingly obscene messages in larger and larger bouquets

eventually adam starts blocking ronan’s mail and he (begrudgingly) promises to stop

one summer when adam is back at the Barns he attempts to grow a small vegetable garden and fails miserably for no reason that is apparent to either him or ronan

ronan being smug about this for three (3) weeks

adam permanently moving to the Barns after graduation and ronan and him agreeing that adam will handle the inside plants and ronan will handle the outside plants

at some point ronan loses a bet to gansey and has to go to a local garden club meeting as punishment

the little old ladies in the gardening club being absolutely obsessed with ronan and not being fooled *at all* by his scowl and prickly facade

by the end of the night they had guilted ronan into coming to next week’s meeting and bringing the boyfriend with him

adam and ronan getting so into gardening club that they start hosting the weekly meetings at the Barns

the Barns just bring so full of plants inside and out that everyone wonders how they still find room

Opal being good at both indoor and outdoor gardening to both her dads’ chagrin

Opal taking a particular interest in carnivorous plants, just to be difficult

ronan and adam’s wedding having an obscene amount of floral arrangements and greenery, all home grown

the wedding also being attended by a bunch of little old ladies from the gardening club

just ronan and adam being in love with each other and opal and their many many plants

pLaNt dAdS

damn that got a bit out of hand... anyway

#pynch #adam parrish #ronan lynch #the raven boys #the raven cycle #pynch headcanon #boys in love #opal #pynch fanfiction #plant dads

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13shapeshifters · 3 years

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(Ok so this is obviously going to contain huge spoilers for the Raven King) @girlbossfarooqlane , this one goes out to you

When I first listened to the chapter at the end of the book of Cabeswater sacrificing itself to save Gansey, my first thought was that Cabeswater was creating Persephone- was making itself Persephone- to be exchanged for Ganseys life.

It might sound a bit strange in the beginning but hear me out! I have some (good, if i might say so) reasons:

The chapter I'm talking about is chapter 67 of the Raven King. In this chapter we learn quite a few things about Cabeswater, that we know to be true because it’s literally written in its perspective:

Cabeswater is made and remade all the time. It is impossibly old and always young at the same time.

Cabeswater is not quite mortal and can’t sacrifice itself for Gansey, who is quite mortal

The sacrifice has to be a life

Adam/it's magician is the one trying to convince him of saving Gansey, giving it ideas and explaining in what limited way of communication they have

The easiest way of saving Gansey would be to make a copy of him, but Cabeswater knows that that isn’t what the Others would want and Cabeswater is all about making wishes (and not-quite-wishes) come true, so that isn’t what happened

[I would, at this point, like to point out that the way the chapter reads it sounds like Cabeswater is making Gansey new: “But it might be able to refashion him into something new” but that sounds like making a copy of Gansey but since They don’t want a copy of Gansey Cabeswater shouldn’t be able to do it (see point 5). Although it might be (probably is as far as i understood that scene?) that Cabeswater remade Gansey entirely. As in from the moment he died the first time, the moment Gansey received “a new heart” from the ley-line to save him from certain death by wasps. That moment is the reason why Gansey is a mirror like Blue, the reason why he died the moment Blue kissed him. They kept reflecting power back at each other, stronger each time, and the weaker one had to break.

But if we ignore those two or three sentences I can just continue with my theory I spent too much time on, yknow?]

Cabeswater can’t just kill itself because a) it’s not really mortal (see point 2) and b) it’s all about creation which is- as you might know- pretty much the opposite of murder

Cabeswater mentions that the life-for-a-life sacrifice would only be possible for itself if it created itself a human shape. Let’s go with this. The rest of the chapter is Cabeswater not understanding humans but trying it’s best at creating authentic life

7.1) Cabeswater has no idea how humans are supposed to be

7.2) Cabeswater is going away to create its new life

7.3) Cabeswater keeps coming back to remember what humans are like, which likely results in life that is not quite what it’s supposed to be like but it’s close enough

7.4) It takes Ganseys wonder and regret, his humanity and puts it inside the new life. I will read this as Cabeswater copy and pasting it and not outright stealing it

Cabeswater has a very calming effect on Adam

This is just a collection of facts (with a few of my comments thrown in) so now let’s get to the things we know about Persephone to start connecting them:

Persephone is described as odd due to her youthfulness being side to side with her old wisdom (taken from the Raven Boys Wiki)

She has a concept of right and wrong but it differs very strongly from the “rulebooks” of the Others

Her physical appearance is almost unnatural, especially her eyes. They are described as black, but they turn out to be every color at once. I’m 80% sure that’s biologically not possible

3.1) It could be that her physical appearance is the result of her being a psychic, but she would be the only psychic in the Raven Cycle to have an altered appearance due to her psychic-ness

Maura and Calla meeting was a coincidence (as long as you believe in coincidences, Persephone meeting them was not

Persephone seems to be a sort of mediator of Foxway, she’s pretty much the only calm presence in the books

She taught Adam despite never taking initiative

She dies while scrying

7.1) She can not only see the past, present, future through scrying, she can participate. See: the scene before the discovery of her body in Foxway. She was with Adam one second and the next one she was gone. The cashier said that she was never there. She was projecting herself

So let’s start connecting dots, shall we?

In the chapters just before Cabeswaters chapter the focus lies on Adam and Noah.

Noah's chapter focuses on his life after death and the “time is a circle” theme that has been in every book of the Raven Cycle. Noah goes “back in time” to save Gansey, it turns out he was the one to rescue Gansey, he is the one who started his search for Glendower (which is something I could maybe write another essay on ). So Noah sacrifices his life for Gansey a second time, the first time when he dies, the second time when he moves on.

Adam meanwhile is scrying, getting back his autonomy from the demon. While scrying he sees Persephone, who is dead, and she tells him to take back control. As far as i know (could research) scrying is believed to do three things:

see the past, present and future

give visions coming from the subconscious and imagination

give visions coming from gods, demons and/or spirits

It seems to me that the scrying in the Raven Cycle is based on point 1 since there are multiple occasions where the characters use scrying as a medium to locate the present location of others.

That would not, however, explain the presence of Persephone while scrying.

What Adam is doing can’t be a vision from his subconscious since he is in Cabeswater, he sees how little is left of it.

It could be argued that she too is a projection of Cabeswater, but at that point it’s too weak to do anything, much less create a whole human being while continuously being destroyed.

There is no reason for Persephone to be there, no way for her to be there. Unless she’s part of Cabeswater.

If we start at the beginning (or the end, really) it goes like this: Cabeswater is dying and Gansey saves it. Gansey died and the Others wish for him to be alive again. Cabeswater, being the wish fulfilling forest it is, does everything to do exactly that:

Cabeswater can’t kill itself and a sacrifice would only work if it created itself a human form to inhabit to be sacrificed.

We know that time is not linear, so Cabeswater goes back a few years, and it creates Persephone. It uses up the last of its power to create itself new (always remade, reborn; see facts about Cabeswater point one) and makes itself Persephone.

Persephone is an odd person with eyes that shouldn’t be and who is young yet old and who knows so much about Cabeswater and knows how to help Adam when he is having problems with communicating with Cabeswater.

She takes Adam as an apprentice despite being often described as almost never taking the initiative and as soon as she starts teaching Adam, he stopped having his anger outbursts (See facts about Cabeswater point 8, “Cabeswater has a calming effect on Adam”).

They want Gansey to live so Cabeswater makes itself a person to help his magician help the Others get to the point where they are now (without Adam they would have never gotten to the point of finding Glendower and stopping the demon). So Cabeswater/Persephone gives Adam back his eyes and hands and Adam gives back the idea to trade Cabeswater for Ganseys life in return and Gansey lives. It's a full circle.

But wait! In Facts about Cabeswater point 2 “can’t trade Cabeswaters immortal life for Ganseys mortal one” this theory would be disproven. That's the second purpose of Persephone (the first one being making sure Adam gets to be present for Ganseys death so he can give the idea):

Persephone is the life that gets taken. Her life is the one that gets sacrificed on the leyline so Gansey can live. And one might argue about her dying before Gansey did but I would like to draw attention to two things.

Persephone died while scrying, she went too far out of her own body and never returned.

Adam saw her mere minutes before Gansey died, also while scrying

So Persephone looked into the future and she stayed there, she fulfilled her role as Adams “mentor” and she fulfilled her role as sacrifice for Gansey, giving her soul (not her body) and she never returned to Foxway, dying in the process (see facts about Persephone point 7.1)

This was her purpose, this is her something more that every significant character in the Raven Cycle has.

Obviously Gansey’s quest and sacrifice, Adam’s connection to Cabeswater, Ronan’s dreams.

Noah’s sacrifice for Ganseys life, Neeve’s role in the demon's uprising and end, being the third one in the Maura-Calla party to make it a good number.

Persephone’s something more was to be a sacrifice and she knew it. In that one scene she’s talking to Adam and he asks if she can see her own death and this is her response: “Everyone sees it. Most people make themselves stop looking, though”. She dies in the chapter following this scene, so he knows exactly what she’s doing, that she is going to die and she does it willingly because the Raven Cycle is all about working toward your something more.

Persephone also knows about her origin. She knows about her “connection” to Cabeswater (her being it, really) and it gets “addressed” in the very same scene.

Here a scene:

But Persephone just said in her tiny voice, “But I see now that it could never be. You’re like me. We’re not really like the others.”

Other what? Humans?

[...]

“We’re really better in our own company,” Persephone said. “It makes it hard, sometimes, for others when they can’t understand us.”

^^^The only really “inhuman” thing about Adam is Cabeswater, which implies that Persephone also has a connection to Cabeswater (again, my point here is trying to prove that she is Cabeswater, so that would be the connection) and the talk about not being able to understand them would only prove that further since Adam and Persephones whole relationship started because of communication problems between Cabeswater and Adam.

Here’s the “short” version:

When Gansey died Cabeswater made itself Persephone (with the help of some time warping and circling and stuff) and Persephone/Cabeswater fulfilled her two purposes (it’s just one, really): To make sure that Adam gets to the point of Gansey’s death to share the idea that will save his life and to be the life that is sacrificed.

Her/It’s whole purpose was to give Gansey life and that’s exactly what happened.

#the raven cycle #the raven king #persephone trc #cabeswater #adam parrish #richard gansey

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astudyinfreewill · 4 years

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hey this may be a stupid question, but it's already been a long time since ive read trk so i don't remember everything properly, so can you explain to me why exactly ganseys behavior in the book is seen as problematic??

hey! don’t worry, there are no stupid questions in my book. in fairness, it’s not about gansey’s behaviour in trk, it’s about his behaviour throughout the whole series. most of his problematic actions all come down to the same basic flaw: self-centeredness. for all that gansey is a generous and loving person, he can’t help but make everything about himself. he is driven by anxiety to define his place in the world beyond his privilege, yet he is blinded by that very same privilege - a bad combination, and one that leads him to show very little empathy for the people he loves.

like many teenagers, he’s looking for affirmation from his friends... but then resents them for not giving it, while failing to see that (most of) his friends are dealing with traumatic issues. when his friends reject his input - because it is not what they need or want at the moment - gansey always, always takes it personally. at no point does he try to ask himself, okay, if this isn’t what my friends need, then what do they need from me and how can i be a better friend? instead, he goes straight into self-pity mode, complaining that his friends reject his support and walk away from him. thing is... it’s not real support if it only makes him feel better and not them.

i don’t really have the time to write an extensive meta on all of the interactions where gansey’s lack of empathy comes into play, but here’s a list of just the most glaring ones in the series, in no particular order:

gansey consistently tries to pay for adam’s way and persuade him to move in with him, even though adam has told him multiple times that he is uncomfortable with it because independence is key to his sense of self as an abuse survivor. sometimes he does this even when he’s fully aware that it will start a fight. despite that, adam is usually the one apologizing, at least on page

notably in trb there’s a scene where gansey tries to get adam to move in with him, but when adam asks what’s going to happen if gansey leaves henrietta - is adam just supposed to drop out of aglionby and follow him? - gansey doesn’t reassure him that’s not gonna happen. he just says adam will have to start again at a new school.

as i said above, this is not true support because it helps gansey feel better without inconveniencing him, but it is not what adam wants. if gansey wanted to support adam, he’d at least promise he would stay in henrietta for their final year of high school, instead of expecting adam to follow him around the world.

when adam rejects that offer and says he’ll stay in the trailer park, gansey takes it incredibly personally and his first response is to victim-blame adam for his abuse, saying things like: “you let your dad pound the shit out of you. you’re as bad as [your abusive mother]. you think you deserve it.” when adam still refuses to move in, and tells him, rightfully so, that gansey doesn’t know what it’s like for him, gansey follows that up with “don’t pretend you have anything to be proud of”. this is past mean and straight into cruel.

adam is the one who apologizes after this fight. let that sink in.

when thinking back on ronan’s suicide attempt, it is strongly implied in the text - and was made explicit in deleted scenes - that gansey appears to have taken ronan’s suicide attempt not just as a traumatic event, but as a slight against him, and is always vaguely guilt-trippy when it comes up (i.e. you promised me you wouldn’t get suicidal again)

gansey does illegal things on ronan’s behalf, multiple times, without ever wondering if this is what ronan wants, see: bribing school officials to keep ronan in school when ronan explicitly wants to drop out, because staying in school is what gansey thinks he should do. even if gansey’s heart was in the right place (i believe in staying in school), he is essentially involving ronan in illegal dealings against his will.

gansey is happy to share his search for glendower with the others, and delegate tasks to them (adam especially) as long as they do things his way. when adam acts against one of his decisions, gansey is absolutely unable to let that go. and while i understand that he is hurt by the breach of trust, because adam went behind his back, his language is telling: “i did tell him that we were to wait, right?”. you don’t “tell” your friends what they “are to do”. that’s not an equal relationship.

this is also seen in the way gansey acts with ronan in more of a parental role, actively ordering him about. you know there is a problem when an outside character refers to ronan as “gansey’s dog” and neither gansey nor ronan disagree with this.

there’s the infamous hospital scene in trb, too, which has been excellently analysed in this meta post by @bleachersmp3 and @mericatblackwood, but i’ll say a few words about it anyway

in this scene, adam has just been beaten into losing his hearing. he has just come out of the hospital, bruised and traumatised, and has been told he will now have a permanent disability as a result of his abuse. he is now also homeless, because by pressing charges against his father to protect ronan, he has ensured his parents will kick him out for good. so he is forced to move into monmouth - something we have been told from the start of the book he absolutely did not want, because it was critical to his sense of self not to depend on gansey’s wealth. so, he’s bitter about it.

and okay, that’s not entirely fair, because it wasn’t gansey’s fault. but if your friend had just undergone such horrific trauma, surely you would be a little lenient, and understand they’re not being objective atm, right? well, not gansey. instead, gansey launches into a tirade at him: “what is your problem, adam? [...] is there something about my place that’s too repugnant for you? [...] I’m sick of tiptoeing around your principles!”

when adam snaps at him that he’s being condescending by using highbrow words (we can assume that this is a discussion they’ve had before, because adam tries to get gansey to use more everyday words multiple times in the book, especially when it’s clear that blue doesn’t understand something, so it’s something gansey already know adam finds condescending), gansey goes straight to victim-blaming again, this time with a classist twist thrown in: “i’m sorry your father never taught you the meaning of repugnant. he was too busy smashing your head against the wall of your trailer while you apologized for being alive.”

gansey does not apologize at any point after this fight.

when adam sacrifices himself to cabeswater - which he does explicitly to stop whelk from murdering one of them and save gansey - gansey takes it as a slight against him, because it goes against what he told adam to do, and sadly asks adam “why? was i so awful?”, showing he has completely misunderstood adam’s reasons. adam tells him, and not for the last time: “it was never about you”.

it clearly doesn’t sink in bc they have the same discussion in the dream thieves, when gansey again asks him why did he go to cabeswater against his orders. he does this in an emotionally manipulative way, too - implying that ronan and blue both think badly of him while gansey has been defending him so adam owes him. adam again tries to tell him “it wasn’t about you”, which gansey refuses to believe, and reminds adam that the glendower search “belongs” to him. adam replies that if gansey wants adam’s help - which gansey relies upon frequently, as it seems like adam is assigned a very large share of research and coming up with ideas - he needs to treat him as an equal

after the fight, when adam has a mental breakdown due to the combination of stress, ptsd, and magically-induced hallucinations, and is found wandering along a highway, clearly dissociating and undergoing amnesia, gansey is still so bitter about their fight that he contemplates leaving him behind in dc, so that “adam will have to apologize for once” (for once???)

consider all this emphasis gansey puts on how much adam betrayed his trust; consider that gansey then spends nearly two books seeing blue behind adam’s back (starting in tdt, through bllb, and halfway through trk)

consider that despite the fact adam takes the reveal gracefully and thanks gansey for his honesty, when adam later in trk is honest with gansey about his feelings for ronan, gansey’s immediate reaction is to assume adam is using ronan as a sexuality experiment and warns him not to break ronan’s heart, because ronan is just so fragile and adam is just so cold

consider that the only basis gansey has for making this assumption is that “adam has hurt him (gansey) so many times before”, but never stops to think about his own responsibility in their disagreements, or whether he ever hurt adam

as you can see, the vast majority of these are in the first two books, with the exception of the “shovel talk” in trk. i would like to say gansey grows over the series, but i think unfortunately it’s more to do with the fact that starting with bllb, the plot is split between gansey/blue and adam/ronan, so gansey just doesn’t get as many interactions with adam and ronan (he’s still bribing school officials on ronan’s behalf though, including selling monmouth which at the time is where ronan is also living).

gansey isn’t a bad person, and doesn’t (always) mean badly. he does love his friends. unfortunately, his refusal to see things from anyone’s perspective but his own makes him a toxic friend on a great number of occasions.

#trc #meta #gansey #toxic friendship #mp #gotta stop here because i need to work and also i'm getting upset #long post #suicide mention tw #anonymous #answer #my meta

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whoslaurapalmer · 3 years

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finished rereading the raven cycle and you know how last year i said i could be pickier about the raven king but didn’t want to? this year i did want to!

-i mean, i love the raven cycle. interesting magic, very comfy, would sell my soul for the gangsey. -but most of this post is gonna be me complaining about the raven king -the tl;dr of it all is ‘the pacing of the raven king is too fast and too slow at the same time. it’s not that i think it was terrible, but i don’t think it was written as successfully as the previous books. i think, because the pacing of the book is so uneven, that the balance between events, and perhaps the balance between the magic and the characters own inherent internal coming of age power, is off. oh btw i am considering reading call down the hawk but Have Concerns’

-noticed the ‘blue is calling gansey from the phone/sewing/cat room and gansey is calling blue from the bathroom-kitchen-laundry’ parallel which i thought was very, very cute. that has my whole heart -also noticed a lot more of gansey’s whole person just constantly thinking about (or not-thinking about) his death -BUT THEN THE PROLOGUE TO THE RAVEN KING SMACKED ME IN THE FACE AGAIN HOW COULD I FORGET THAT GANSEY LIKE. LITERALLY KNOWS HE’S GONNA DIE AND THE RAVEN KING IS HIM TRYING MAKE SURE EVERYONE WILL BE OKAY AFTER HE’S DEAD -I CANNOT HANDLE RICHARD CAMPBELL GANSEY THE THIRD MY GOD THIS BOY

-canNOT overstate how much i really do love gwenllian. -i love her so much. i love her so much -same with malory. still love him.

-okay i guess i appreciated artemus a little more -i think my thing is like. do i have a problem with blue being part tree? no not necessarily. but the pacing in the raven king is so uneven that i think what i dislike is how the reveal happened -no i don’t know what i’d do differently!! -every time i disagree with a writing choice in a book i try and think ‘now lulu, as someone with a Literal Degree In Putting Words Together, what would you do differently?’ which is a REALLY good writing exercise but mostly just ends up with me going ‘uhhhh. idk. probably have to backtrack a couple plot points and restart from there. no i will not elaborate.’

-last time i thought the raven king moved too fast and this time i agree but also thought it moved too slow?? -i devoured the first three books every time and then both times i read the raven king i kept putting it down because i thought the pacing was so off, so i was simultaneously interested and not interested in what was going on -too fast re: there were A LOT of characters going on, laumonier and piper and henry and neeve and plot points were just piling up and more like slamming together than converging (piper being laumonier’s daughter and henry’s mother being seondeok especially feel less like pieces falling into place than, oh look! ~a thing!!~), ALSO GOD NOAH NEEDED TO SHOW UP MORE (just like. a smidge more noah. would’ve put a lot together), and the speed of finding glendower/driving back/gansey dying/the epilogue -too slow re: somehow so many things are happening but nothing is happening in some parts, some parts dragged, people are just moving around with no real direct sense of working towards the end, blue and gansey were at lunch while adam and ronan were in cabeswater that one time????????????? (-not that they can’t get lunch. but they had time to get lunch???????) -oh i think the four of them maybe felt the most disjointed as a group in this book, which is again not necessarily terrible, but a thing -and these things are just so disappointing because i thought the pacing of the first three books was so GOOD!! things take their time to happen but HAPPEN and i love that so much!!!! -i do feel bad criticizing the raven king bc i know maggiestief was going through health problems at the time and it took longer than she wanted to finish. but i am still criticizing it because it’s still a very unsatisfying ending

-reading this time i felt EVEN MORE FIRMLY that gansey should’ve been glendower, and even went so far as to consider, is the text saying he’s glendower, it’s just not explicitly stated?? because of all the parallels??? of gansey being old and young at the same time, gansey + his own magicians, the parallel between glendower shoving that guy in a tree and gansey wanting to do the same to ronan over the pig, the timelessness of the things gansey loves, the Power of command in his voice, a resurrection in the first place -and i was going to just say, yeah, it’s there, until i got to noah’s chapter again. -i think noah deserved at least one chapter per book (and maybe more during the raven king) and that would’ve made an already tight plot even tighter, especially in the raven king. (-i was also thinking that if gansey was glendower then something else would’ve happened when they found him, no i still do not know what)

-big respect though to maggiestief saying glendower had to either be dead or evil and by that page number there wasn’t enough room for him to be evil -and big respect to the fact that, of course it’s not about teens finding a hero, it’s about teens becoming heroes (these thoughts also pulled from her twitter reread), finding glendower (alive) would never have been narratively good or satisfying (-especially because it makes sense that glendower was dead all along -- if gwenllian was put to sleep wrong, who’s to say that glendower wasn’t, too?) -BUT, IT ALSO MAKES SENSE IF IT’S GANSEY -but then you have like. the whole time it wasn’t even glendower. it was noah -which is why i wanted more noah!!! to better lead to that!!!!!!! cause i feel like that kinda comes out of nowhere!!!!! -the balance of the magical and the real is just off in the reveal i think -man i don’t know. this is a lot of words.

-i also appreciated adam’s character arc better this time, which was really nice. -but i still feel no great attachment to ronan and adam’s relationship

-you know what. i want more mr. gray and maura -idk if i agree with him leaving henrietta. much like the previous paragraphs and my whole gripe with the raven king, it’s not terrible but i don’t think it’s done well, as well as it could’ve been, as well as the previous books -also! more adam and persephone would’ve been good

-i was rereading maggiestief’s tweets where she reread the books and i forget which thread this was in but she picked out one of the ‘character x says something that makes character y reevaluate every single interaction previously’ lines and she was like ‘that’s all these books are’ and i was like ‘YEAH MAGGIE. I FEEL LIKE I SEE THIS LINE EVERY SINGLE SECOND.’ and not necessarily in a good way -sometimes you can reuse a line and it is a parallel or a connection. sometimes you are just reusing a line over and over.

-she also mentions writing arguments from a point of, both characters are right, or think they’re right, or as right as they can be or something to that effect -which i really like, and i absolutely 100% see in her writing -and so i don’t know if this is just a me thing, because i have this obsessive need to backtrack through even the tiniest disagreements after the fact to calmly figure out where i’m coming from and acknowledge where the other person’s coming from, so while i like that every character comes from a place of ‘i’m right’ i feel like it leads to a lot of arguments left unresolved -but i think that’s just me feeling like everybody should always talk everything out as much as possible so -and like resolution doesn’t have to be a big dialogue acknowledgement -but i still didn’t feel like it left a lot of room for these characters to really work towards change -they do change! but i wanted to see it more

-oh hey so. did gansey successfully sell of monmouth? did ronan get a diploma anyway?

-me: ‘thing’ is ultimately a vague, unspecific word and should be used sparingly in a narration, much like ‘interesting’ maggiestief: /flinging out ‘thing’ all the time me: you know what, though???? sure, good for her

-i like henry. but he’s written terribly, the poor guy comes OUT OF NOWHERE too and should’ve shown up earlier more than his two times in blue lily lily blue, and adam and ronan’s super casual racism towards him is like..................................................................mostly unchallenged and really unnecessary -if a racist comment is going to remain unchecked and unchallenged by the narrative and the characters, what does it accomplish? -especially because it never ever shows up again or showed up before -and gansey just kind of scoffs it aside and blue doesn’t even really truly call it out which is like, the amount of other things gansey will call out???? the amount of stuff blue will call out??????? AND THEY JUST LET THAT GO?????? -so, again! it’s not necessary!! it does nothing!!! it just adds unchallenged racism that has no place!!!!!!!!!!!!

-also reading this time i felt like maggiestief went out of her way to just not say what race blue was -that shouldn’t be a thing you just repeatedly dance around and never confirm for your main character

-so my library still does not have the ebook for call down the hawk but i am vaguely considering buying it to read it but also....................i don’t know -i did read the first eight chapters because they were online and i’m like. Intrigued but also?????? Concerned. idk. idk

-looking at it from a distance i have the same concern with it that i do with king of scars. -do i think dreamer trilogy is necessary in the way that it explores things that are set up in the raven cycle and have big potential consequences? yes. the hunt for the ‘greywaren’, kavinsky proving that there are other dreamers, trying to make sure a dreamed thing can still exist if something happens to the dreamer, the possibilities and limits of dreamers, ronan trying to dream another cabeswater, ronan’s fear about what’s real and what isn’t/what he dreamed and what he didn’t dream, and maggiestief clearly loving writing ronan and wanting to write more of him -do i think those things are executed well in the dreamer trilogy? from what i’ve read about it, maybe not???? -especially re: ronan and adam’s character arcs????? -which i feel like, stupid and bitchy being picky about. -change and recovery do not happen in straight lines. but i think this kind of cycles back to the way she writes arguments with like, is it too unresolved to the point that no change, either positive or negative, is happening? -ugggg also makes me worry that i just wasn’t Reading it enough or thinking about it enough -my additional concern is that maggiestief should’ve maybe had firmer rules for what can and can’t be taken out of a dream (-yes i suppose that limiting the very nature of a dream goes against the power of ‘the dream’ so it makes sense for it to be limitless BUT i feel like especially the dreaming of people is gonna paint you into a corner if you’re not careful) -but i am also BIG worried re: the character arcs. -also where ronan’s character arc is after the raven king, do i think he would do the reveal in mr. impossible?? i...........do not know -well i didn’t think so AND THEN I READ OPAL which i kind of enjoyed, with reservations, which is mostly back to ‘is no change happening’ (-i love that opal is like, ‘ronan’s inner child’ or whatever it was and i liked her more this time around but last year when i read the raven cycle i was like ‘but what’s the point of taking opal out cause they just kind of shuffle her around?’ now, what was the point of taking opal out if they’re gonna put her back??? and actually almost COMPLETELY IGNORE HER in the short story????? there was so much potential there for her and ronan and it didn’t happen...........) -nightwash kinda just happened too, huh. (-in general ronan bringing his nightmares back with him is like. God Perfect) -but this all really takes me back to maybe there should’ve been limits on dreaming -also after reading the first eight chapters, i’m like -i 100% respect maggiestief for not wanting to rewrite the raven cycle and not wanting to just write about henrietta, i absolutely do -but it feels so strange to read about ronan and adam and not read about gansey and blue as well? -which isn’t TERRIBLE, but. -but when i see like, single lines from or little sections i’m like ‘oh that looks like a good time’ because i do like the way maggiestief writes because a great deal of it is so rhythmically poetic and beautiful, but so is a great deal of the raven king while still being disappointing. -i feel like i’m just gonna feel about it like how i feel about the raven king honestly -and well king of scars.......

-ANYWAY -might read it. might not. still going back and forth on this a lot. i was leaning towards, i’m gonna do it, but now i’m leaning more towards, i don’t want to, i want to keep the image of these characters where i like them, and right now i am aggressively combing through fanfic because i care a great deal about post-raven king trauma discussion and that’s mostly what i want at the current time

#lulu talks about the raven cycle #a tag now!!

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disregardcanon · 3 years

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i’ve been seeing so many posts about forgetting the plot of raven cycle books so here’s my best memory approximation

the raven boys: blue sees gansey on st. mark’s eve, which means he’s the true love she’s going to kill. gansey and ronan and adam are fucking weird about wealth and ownership. gansey wants adam to move in with him and ronan and noah, which is reasonable except they’re all fucking weird about money and ownership. is this the book where ronan punches adam’s dad? barrington whelk, the feral latin teacher, wants to do something??? with the ley line. i think it intersected with the glendower thing. he did it before when he killed noah but he has to do it again? i don’t remember. he killed noah, who was his best friend. adam and blue date for a bit. whelk kidnaps someone and drags them to the ley line to kill them and instead adam lets him die and makes a deal with cabeswater. we find out ronan brought chainsaw out of his dreams. fade to black

the dream thieves: are blue and adam still dating? is this the book they break up in? is this the one where adam goes to court? ronan does gay car things with kavinsky, who is both gay and homophobic and also OBSESSED with ronan. he’s a dreamer too and he dreamed a copy of his friend and he’s very destructive and ronan Does Not Want to Be Him. he kidnaps matthew at some point. i think this is the book where declan gets assaulted for info about the greywaren.

blue lily, lily blue: if adam didn’t already live in the church he does now and ronan becomes even gayer and catholic-er. ronan dreams him hand cream and they start staring at each other longingly. somehow the colin greenmantle thing happens. ronan dreams some sort of damning evidence and he dies somehow. gray man pops up here? somehow they end up underground and find gweniliian, the feral woman of the woods, and we find out blue’s bio dad is a tree. her up and coming step dad is a hitman. piper greenmantle gets bored. aurora lynch is alive again in cabeswater.

the raven king: henry cheng shows up and the plot shifts around him, engulfing him in gansey and blue’s arc. he got kidnapped and has a bee. he and gansey have motifs in common. we have a toga party. they find glendower and wow that dead welsh king sure can dead. piper greenmantle unleashes a demon and i think it like, did something to adam at some point. the demon destroys cabeswater, which destroys aurora lynch violently. gansey and blue kiss and he dies. he’s cabeswater now and the raven king and also hella living-dead. declan has The Emotional Reveal TM. blue and gansey and henry go on a road trip and then ronan gets a baby somehow

#trc

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thetypologymodel-archived · 4 years

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MBTI: The Raven Cycle

Richard Campbell Gansey III: INFJ

“The way Gansey saw it was this: If you had a special knack for finding things, it meant you owed the world to look.”

Gansey finds divine purpose in his near-death experience: to find Glendower. He lets this abstract vision of a mythical dead Welsh king consume his life. Unwavering about finding Glendower, he rearranges his life, travels to countless different countries, and moves to Henrietta for this quest. Gansey shuffles between different personas as the situation calls for it. He's tempered and polite in his interaction with others, used to getting his way, and solving problems with his natural ability to charm others. He bears a strong sense of responsibility for his friends, often putting their needs and feelings before his own that he feels as if he would never be able to walk away from them. Gansey's logical, curious, interested in things for the sake of it rather than for a specific objective. His journal, notably, filled with ideas and research and his analyses, serves more of an aesthetic purpose than a practical one.

Blue Sargent: ENFP

“She wasn’t interested in telling other people’s futures. She was interested in going out and finding her own.”

Blue is eclectic, quirky, looking for something deeper and more profound in the world that she can call her own. She has a sense of adventure, quick to change her mind about the Raven Boys when she realizes they can be mutually beneficial to each other. She's fiercely individualistic, always careful that her sense of unconventionality reflects off of her at all times. Strong-willed and opinionated, Blue knows her mind and doesn't let anyone stop her from doing what she wants (she refuses to let her lack of magical abilities curse hold her back; she defies Maura repeatedly so that she can help Gansey and his friends with their quest.) Blue's both proud and exasperated by her sensibility (Si). She lets her personal experiences with the Aglionby boys skew her perceptions, and refuses to change her mind about it until she can judge who they are for herself.

Adam Parrish: INTJ

“Adam had once told Gansey, “Rags and riches isn’t a story anyone wants to here until after it’s done.”

Adam lives in a near-constant detachment from his reality, sharply focused on the future instead. His inner world is absorbed in building, shaping, and working toward the sort of life he wants for himself. He's strategic and pragmatic — every decision he makes gets him a step closer to leaving Henrietta; their quest for Glendower is a means to an end; he's the only one actively thinking of a future after Glendower. Adam serves as the voice of reason among their friends; he's focused on facts, on tangible proof, on what he can accomplish. Adam is stubbornly proud — he refuses to accept anyone's help, resents the way Gansey treats him like an object, and is determined to be who he is and to do things on his own. Adam's inferior Se shows up in his tendency to indulge in moments of uncharacteristic recklessness now and again, like when he wakes the ley line and sacrifices himself to Cabeswater.

Ronan Lynch: ISFP

“Ronan loved it so much. He nearly couldn’t bear it. He wanted to destroy something.”

Ronan's emotions are intense; his anger simmers, burns, and rages, and tends to express itself in destructive ways. He loathes talking about what he's feeling and rarely shares his secrets with others until he sees no other choice. Ronan does what he wants; he acts before he can think, indulges in dangerous sensory impulses regardless of the consequences. He does what he deems is right and has a quiet way of caring about the people closest to him (he dreams a bottle of hand cream for Adam) Ronan's grasp of the abstract and the unexplained is adequate; he learned to operate within the dream world by himself. Occasionally, he follows through with his instincts. He gets caught up in his sole explanation for a situation (he realizes Blue knows Gansey from the recording; he suspects he pulled Cabeswater from his dreams) but he ends up being right each time.

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bookish-mind · 4 years

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I read blue lily, lily blue here’s my existential crisis:

*spoilers*

I am already very confused

Bro I thought Maura got taken but she rlly just up and left that’s messed up

I FINALLY GOT TO “maybe I dreamt you”

Ronan being forced to sing is my new favorite thing

Ronan instinctively holding onto blue, gansey paralyzed with fear, Ronan saying that if they die he dies this is so stressful hELP

Let Adam be happy for once challenge

The Bluesey tension tho

“I’m tired of it” “Tired of what?” “Decaying” I cant take this literally stab me in the heart it would hurt less

Oof Latin teacher is the trc equivalent of the cursed defense against the dark arts position at hogwarts lol

“he was surprised that the person was Gansey and not Ronan” ... does Ronan often visit you late at night Adam?? 👀

Gansey and adam’s friendship seems so fragile and insecure at the moment but it’s mending ! It’s mending !

Gansey said he’s gonna ask glendower for Noah’s life but why do I feel like that’s not gonna happen

Also I’ve kinda been in denial about gansey’s fated death but this book just won’t let me ignore it

Either he has to die to wake glendower or he has to die in order for Noah to live again or something bc they mentioned before that the favors are reciprocal

I even have this crack theory that gansey is.. glendower or like a vessel for glendower ? Like when he was brought back to life as a kid glendower became a part of him so in order for glendower to wake gansey has to die (idk it sounds more plausible in my head)

Even if my theory is wrong you cannot deny the parallels that are being drawn between gansey and glendower

Blue explaining how the gangsey are all so in love and obsessed and caught up in each other,, truly an unmatched found family

This book should be titled “gansey’s existential crisis”

RONAN GAVE ADAM LOTION I-

Knowing that gansey was chosen to live over Noah bc gansey would be the one to get shit done has me feelin a lot of conflicting things bc like yes but also Noah deserved better

Gansey keeps talking about death and the end and the grave and time and I just feel like he knows. Deep down he knows that he’s supposed to die

Ok I’ll admit these bluesey phone calls are cute

MuRdEr sQuAsH

Noah really be knowing everyone’s secrets huh

Adam keeps catching glances from Ronan and he’s like oh? What’s this? But he just brushes it off bc it’s Ronan,, I cannot handle this

MATTHEW IS A LITERAL DREAM

Ronan has a crush Ronan has a crush Ronan has a crush

Man I wish we were getting some of these scenes from Ronan’s pov tbh

Adam no there’s no way that gansey dying is gonna be your fault, no way

Oh damn gansey is letting blue drive the pig?? Thats how you know it’s true love

Shopping cart: 1 Adam and Ronan: 0

Adam has compared Ronan to a god and a king in the span of like two pages

Also I love how Ronan keeps showing Adam all these new sides to him and Adam is so taken aback every time

Was dream Ronan’s death really necessary??!!!!!!! stiefvater ma’am you’ll be hearing from my therapist

Cabeswater protected Adam from Robert 😭

There’s not enough Noah in this book, but I guess maybe that’s the point since he’s like.. decaying

Adam just keeps getting more and more magical and I love it

GANSEY AND RONAN SHOWED UP FOR ADAM AT COURT IM SOBBING

PERSEPHONE NO WHYYY

Damn jesse too :(

I hate that there’s only thirty pages left but so much is going on still I’m so anxious

Whatever you do don’t imagine Maura going home and realizing that Persephone is gone

ADAM WAS THE OTHER SLEEPER

“It was time to find Glendower. They all knew it” I’m not ready I’m not ready I’m not ready

Ugh neeve

There’s so much I didn’t even address like who/what is artemus and I actually grew to like mr gray this book and what the heck did neeve and piper wake up and what is gansey’s secret thing at school and I liked malory’s aura thing and how much I enjoyed reading gwenllian’s chaotic scenes

But my thoughts are so full of Adam rn bc of the growth this boy has gone through and how he’s finally finally allowing himself to be known and he’s powerful and that makes him realize his worth and my heart is just so full of Adam Adam Adam Adam and how I know he’s going to do everything in his power to save gansey in the next book and I’m scared

(As always thanks for sticking around if you made it this far!!!)

Book 1 Book 2

#i read this book in a day so this commentary is probly not the best but whatevs #blue lily lily blue #maggie stiefvater #the raven cycle #trc #gansey #adam parrish #ronan lynch #blue sargent #noah czerny

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emmerrr · 5 years

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Ronan and “Adam” > ”Parrish”

I remember seeing a post a while back that seemed to imply the first time Ronan actually calls Adam by his first name is in TRK, right before they kiss for the second time. But actually, Ronan calls him Adam once in every book (twice in TRK, but one of those is said to Declan and not Adam).

I went back through and found them all to put them in this post, mostly because I wanted them all in one place, but also because I wanted to see if there were any correlations to be made between those moments; any insight as to why Ronan would slip from calling Adam ‘Parrish’ in those particular instances. (Please let me know if I’ve missed any!

The Raven Boys

This is the first and only one I found in the first book, and it happens when they find Cabeswater. It’s from Blue’s POV so it’s hard to know what either Ronan or Adam are thinking/feeling at this moment, but for context, Ronan is drawing Adam’s attention to the dreaming tree.

It’s possible his use of Adam here has something to do with Blue; maybe he thought the rare use of Adam’s first name out of Ronan’s mouth was more likely to get him to pay attention to him with Blue there. But I also think that it might have something to do with Ronan being unsettled by the tree. I think he subconsciously recognises it, or knows what it does, probably because he’s dreamt about it before. You get this bit after both Adam and Blue have had visions in the tree--

--so I wonder if that first “Adam” is simply Ronan forgetting himself in the moment at finding the tree (and also finding Cabeswater I guess? Considering he dreamt it, even if he doesn’t realise that yet). But again, it’s hard to know internal thoughts and feelings here because we’ve only got Blue’s POV.

The Dream Thieves

Only one again, and it comes near the end when Ronan’s trying to dream something to take down Kavinsky’s dream-dragon:

This comes in a moment where Ronan is desperate; Kavinsky has Matthew, and has also just woken up with an actual monster at a 4th of July party where a lot of people could be hurt or even killed, including Matthew, Blue, and Gansey. The only one who can stop Kavinsky at this point is Ronan, and he doesn’t know how because Cabeswater is utterly drained. And suddenly, there’s Adam, and Ronan’s instinct is not to call him ‘Parrish’.

For this one at least, Ronan is Stressed™, worried and scared for Matthew, and at a complete loss over what to do. He’s vulnerable, and I think this slip of the tongue showcases that.

The fact that Ronan can’t quite tell if it’s the real Adam or a dream-Adam at first is (I think at least!) quite telling here as well. We already know that Adam appears in Ronan’s dreams sometimes, and it makes me wonder if Ronan calls him Adam rather than Parrish when he’s dreaming. There’s no text to support that in canon, but it is something to think about.

Blue Lily, Lily Blue

I have a lot of feelings about this one. Ronan’s taken Adam out to the Barns to show him what he’s been trying (and failing) to do -- wake the sleeping dream-cows.

Adam’s the smartest person he knows and he wants his help, he wants Adam to see something he’s missed, but he’s also trying to build himself up to reveal this secret, because he knows Adam’s going to want a reason. So on top of his anger, this is also an intensely vulnerable moment for Ronan. It’s frustration and fear and desperation all rolled into one, and he needs Adam to feel the gravity of the situation.

With everything else he’s juggling, it’s no wonder that the ‘Adam’ slips out here. It’s such a huge admission on Ronan’s part.

The Raven King

The first one in the final book is said not to Adam, but to Declan:

This is the first instance that I can remember where Ronan hasn’t referred to Adam as Parrish to any other character. He calls him Parrish when talking to both Blue and Gansey, and I don’t actually think there’s any exceptions to that? But here, in this emotionally fraught conversation with his brother, he mentions Adam by name. But it’s not just Adam on his own, it’s “Adam and I”; it’s “our”. They’re a unit, a team, and it shows how much they’ve grown together.

And then, FINALLY, there’s this one:

...Honestly do I really need to say anything. (I mean, probably not but I’m going to anyway)

Again, like in TDT instance, he says it when he’s unsure, but it’s also so much more than that here. He fundamentally knows how Adam works; he’s kissed him, he’s laid it all out there, and now Adam needs to think and to process. So Ronan waits and waits and waits, until he just can’t wait any longer. And he uses Adam’s name as a question, hoping against hope that he’s going to like the answer.

(And he does.)

tl;dr -- Ronan tends to use Adam over Parrish when he’s at his most vulnerable, when the moment is too big for him to remember to posture.

#the raven cycle #pynch #ronan lynch #adam parrish #trc #long post

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a-dandelion-dreamer · 4 years

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Word Wanderings Post #1 – The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

This is the beginning of a reread. I’ve loved this author for years and The Raven Cycle is a particular favourite of mine. Please note that if you haven’t read this book, this post will definitely contain spoilers!

The Raven Boys is the first book in a quartet and juggles a multitude of characters, including our four main characters (Gansey, Ronan, Adam and Blue) and our plus one (Noah). While it does have some external conflict, it is mainly driven by the characters and their relationships with one another. This book is complex and dense with detail, with a structure that is a little unusual. Most books or series have a driving hook that catches readers right at the beginning and is the selling tagline. For example, in the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, it’s Percy finding out he’s secretly a demigod, which directly turns into monsters attacking him and his mom disappearing. In the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, it’s the existence of a game that forces children to fight to the death and then subsequently Katniss volunteering to take her sister’s place at the Reaping. In Six of Crows, it’s a crew of six misfits embarking upon an impossible heist.

Ostensibly, the hook of this book is that Blue is destined to kill her true love with a kiss. That’s what it says on the back of the book, and it’s certainly an overarching threat present for the rest of the series. Tied in as well is Gansey’s search for Glendower, a sleeping king Gansey believes is buried somewhere on a ley line. This is another whole-series thread. The real heart of the story, however, is the boys and Blue and their friendship and their interactions with the other messy pieces of their lives and their search to find meaning and happiness. This type of storytelling is not for everyone, especially those who might enjoy more action-driven tales, but it’s the kind of storytelling I love.

(And in writing and other personal creative projects, I think it’s important to let what you love drive you forwards).

Here are three points I took away from reading this book:

Point #1: Keeping readers interested by embedding small mysteries

The trick is to make your readers want to know what happens next. This is something I have trouble with and therefore I’m particularly interested in seeing how other books handle it.

Each chapter in this book is written from a different character’s perspective. I’ll include the first and last lines (which I think are brilliantly done) in the form: (first line/last line). Following that, I’ll describe some mysteries that the chapter raises.

Prologue: Blue (“Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she’d been told that she would kill her true love.”/”’You’re Maura’s daughter,’ Neeve said, and before Blue could answer, she added, “this is the year you’ll fall in love.’”) – pg. 1-4

We’re introduced to the idea that Blue will kill her true love if she kisses him

Which immediately raises the question: who is he? And how does she get from being determined not to fall in love to killing someone with a kiss?

We learn about Blue’s psychic family, which I think is super interesting

Blue’s half-aunt Neeve comes to town and really hits us with that: “This is the year you’ll fall in love.” Pay attention, that line says.

Chapter 1: Blue (“It was freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrived.”/“’There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve, Blue. Either you’re his true love,’ Neeve said, ‘or you killed him.’”) – pg. 5-16

Blue and Neeve watch for the future dead

Blue, the only non-psychic in her family, sees a spirit for the first time

The guy she’s destined to kill or fall in love with (or both)

His name is Gansey, and now we’re wondering who he is

Chapter 2: Gansey (“’It’s me,’ said Gansey.”/”’That seems obvious,’ he answered. ‘We find out who you were talking to.’”) – pg. 17-28

Brilliant cut to Gansey

This guy is very real and because of the previous scene, we want to know who he is

We learn about his quest, which adds another layer of mystery

Gansey also heard Blue, on his recorder, so now he’s wondering about her

We ask ourselves: how will these two meet?

Also, introduces Gansey’s friends Adam and Ronan

Ronan has a tumultuous relationship with his brother Declan

THEY HAVE A NUMBER FOR A PSYCHIC (guess who belongs to a psychic family)

Chapter 3: Blue (“Mornings at 300 Fox Way were fearful, jumbled things.”/”’Blue,’ Maura said finally. ‘I don’t have to tell you not to kiss anyone, right?’”) – pgs. 29-37

Introduces Blue’s house

Introduces Blue’s relationship with her mother Maura

Neeve scries and learns that something is strange about Henrietta

Again, we wonder how Blue and Gansey will meet. And also, is it possible to save Gansey from his fate?

Chapter 4: Adam (“Adam Parrish had been Gansey’s friend for eighteen months, and he knew that certain things came along with that friendship.”/”’Excelsior’, said Gansey, and shut the door behind them.”) – pg. 38-51

Introduces Monmouth Manufacturing

Delves further into Gansey’s quest (will Gansey find what he’s looking for?)

Adam is suspicious that someone is spying on their search

Develops tension between Ronan and Declan

Chapter 5: Whelk (“Barrington Whelk was feeling less than sprightly as he slouched down the hall of Whitman House, the Aglionby admin building.”/”It was possible that Czerny’s death wasn’t for nothing after all.”) – pg. 52-56

Adam was suspicious in the previous chapter and now here’s Whelk, being suspicious

What is this guy’s deal?

Whelk hears Gansey is researching ley lines and suddenly gets very interested

Who is Czerny and how did he die?

Chapter 6: Blue (“Blue wouldn’t really describe herself as a waitress.”/”Neeve had to be wrong. She’d never fall in love with one of them.”) – pg. 57-64

Blue goes to work at Nino’s, the same place Gansey and his crew are going

Blue’s mother calls: Gansey has scheduled a reading

THEY MEET! This is great. They meet and they both dislike each other. They immediately conflict and neither realizes the other is the person they’re looking for.

The dramatic irony is fantastic

Adam is interested in Blue and Blue is a little bit interested in him

How does Blue end up liking Gansey, who she currently hates?

Truly, a mystery

WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN THE TWO MEET AGAIN AT THE PSYCHIC READING???

I could do this for the whole book, but you get the picture. There’s always something the reader is left wondering, even if it’s something small, or a future interaction they’re looking forwards to.

A note: this is particularly effective when it’s tied to personal agency. You want to see what your characters will do, and this means more if you have dynamic characters who make choices.

Point #2: Atmosphere and memorable locations

Another big strength of this book is the personality that it imbues its settings with. Take three examples: 300 Fox Way, Monmouth Manufacturing and Cabeswater.

300 Fox Way – the chaotic, full-to-the-brim house where Blue lives with her mom and her aunt and her mom’s two best friends Persephone and Calla and a multitude of other psychic women, all showcased through background details. I love this house and its aesthetic.

Quote: “Mornings at 300 Fox Way were fearful, jumbled things. Elbows in sides and lines for the bathroom and people snapping over tea bags placed into cups that already had tea bags in them. There was school for Blue and work for some of the more productive (or less intuitive) aunts. Toast got burned, cereal went soggy the refrigerator door hung open and expectant for minutes at a time. Keys jingled as car pools were hastily decided.” – pg 29

Monmouth Manufacturing – the abandoned factory that Gansey, Ronan and Noah have made their home. They live on the upper floor and the description of the space really doubles as a character portrait for Gansey. Use settings to reveal and further describe your characters!

Quote: “The high ceiling soared above them, exposed iron beams holding up the roof. Gansey’s invented apartment was a dreamer’s laboratory. The entire second floor, thousands of square feet, spread out before them. Two of the walls were made up of old windows—dozens of tiny, warped panes, except for a few clear ones Gansey had replaced—and the other two walls were covered with maps: the mountains of Virginia, of Wales, of Europe. Marker lines arced across each of them. Across the floor, a telescope peered at the Western sky; at its feet lay piles of arcane electronics meant to measure magnetic activity.

And everywhere, everywhere, there were books. Not the tidy stacks of an intellectual attempting to impress, but the slumping piles of a scholar obsessed. Some of the books weren’t in English. Some of the books were dictionaries for the languages that some of the other books were in. Some of the books were actually Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Editions.” – pg 41

Cabeswater — a magical, sentient forest. I love this forest so much. I love the overall portrayal of magic in this series and this forest is my favourite example of that. The trees speak Latin, time is fluid and sometimes the very air manifests your thoughts, so keep a watch on them.

Quote: “The stream trickled sluggishly out of the woods from between two diamond-barked dogwoods. With Gansey in the lead, they all followed the water into the trees. Immediately, the temperature dropped several degrees. Blue hadn’t realized how much insect noise there was in the field until it was replaced by occasional birdsong under the trees. This was a beautiful, old wood, all massive oak and ash trees finding footing among great slabs of cracked stone. Ferns sprang from rocks and verdant moss grew up the sides of the tree trunks. The air itself was scented with green and growing and water. The light was golden through the leaves. Everything was alive, alive.” – pg 219

What can I take away from this? Using small, specific details to make a setting unique and memorable can add atmosphere to your novel, showcase characters and make a reader fall in love with a particular place.

Point #3: Evolving arcs

This story contains a lot of interwoven plot threads. This can be hard to balance (I know from personal experience) but I think this novel pulls it off. It’s very, very good at doing many things at once. The important thing to think about is a beginning, middle and end for different story arcs that you introduce. Here’s one example (of many) from this book.

Example 1: Noah

Oh Noah. Noah is a brilliant example of an arc in this book and also one of my favourite demonstrations of the fact that sometimes you can hide things right in the open.

First mention (pg. 26). Noah goes out for pizza with the crew, but there is no mention of him going to school or otherwise having a life. This theme will continue: while Gansey, Adam, Ronan and Blue have conflict and fleshed-out internal worlds, Noah is a static character. The first time I read this book, I was like Gansey. I didn’t notice how much Noah was missing until it was explicitly called out.

First line of dialogue: “I’ve been dead for seven years,” Noah said. “That’s as warm as they get.” (pg. 47) (IT’S RIGHT THERE, but yet I didn’t pick up on it. Clever, clever.)

Noah’s room is also described as ‘meticulous’. As in, practically unused.

“Noah, we won’t make you eat,” says Gansey. “Need some more alone time?” says Ronan. More little hints.

The character descriptions are honestly so good, worth a study all in themselves.

Noah doesn’t come to the psychic’s reading or the helicopter trip, which the other boys do

Somehow, he has a canny knack for knowing things and sharing secrets.

“Don’t throw it away.” (pg. 165) (to Gansey)

Gansey calls for Noah but he’s not there (pg. 233)

“Blue permitted Noah to pet the crazy tufts of her hair” (pg. 238). Not particularly arc related but SUPER CUTE.

The gang visits Cabeswater again and finds Noah’s old abandoned car, a red Mustang (not that they realize it yet). In the trunk is a dowsing rod, a sign someone else is looking for ley lines. Noah throws up (from the trauma of his murder).

Blue and Gansey visit the old church and find a body. “The face on the driver’s license was Noah’s.” (pg. 274)

THE BIG SCENE IN WHICH NOAH IS REVEALED AS A GHOST (what a brilliant scene)

“Adam,” he demanded, “what is Noah’s last name?”

“Tell me,” Gansey said, “which classes you share with Noah.”

“When does he eat? Have you ever seen him eat?”

“Does he pay rent? When did he move in? Have you ever questioned it?”

These are all questions Gansey asks his friends, but are also questions we must ask ourselves. We have been fooled in the same way as they have.

“I told you,” Noah said. “I told everyone.” (pg. 278)

“The question is: Who killed you?” (pg. 279)

Noah acts like a real ghost (disappears, reappears, knocks objects off desks)

“Maybe moving it off the ley line had stolen his energy.” (pg. 298) (in regards to Noah’s body)

Noah appears, using Blue’s energy. “I want you to know,” Noah said, “I was…more…when I was alive.” (pg. 305)

“You were the sacrifice, weren’t you Noah? Someone killed you for this.” (pg. 307). It turns out Noah, the friend they didn’t realize was dead, was killed in a ritual similar to the one that is attempted at the end of the novel by their Latin teacher, and is the reason Gansey is alive.

Remember: “Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not.” (pg. 271).

It’s all very circular and interwoven and very good plotting.

Noah said, “But you already know.” (pg. 309) (In regards to who killed him) JUMPCUTS to a scene with Whelk

“I’m going to fix Noah. Somehow.” (pg. 335) (says Gansey)

She allowed him to pet her hair with his icy fingers. “Not so spiky as usual,” he said sadly. (pg. 353)

“Don’t throw it away,” Noah whispered. (pg. 371) To Adam, this time.

Noah warns Gansey that Adam is gone (he is now 100% a spooky ghost boy)

THE MURDERED/REMEMBERED SCENE (breaks my heart). They’re all in Cabeswater again for the climax of the novel and Noah, who doesn’t exist in bodily form, traces words into the dust on his old car

Noah’s funeral: “Please say something to them.” / “Mrs. Czerny, he’s sorry for drinking your birthday schnapps.” (pg. 406-407) (ouch, my heart)

They dig up his bones and rebury them on the ley line

“Can we go home? This place is so creepy.” … ”Noah!” Gansey cried gladly. Blue hurled his arms around his neck. He looked alarmed, and then pleased, and then he pet the tufts of her hair. (pg 408)

Broadly, the arc looks like this (look how actions lead to consequences which lead to further actions):

The boys have a friend named Noah, who is sometimes there and sometimes not

LOTS OF FORESHADOWING

They find Noah’s dead body

They confront Noah and find out he’s a ghost

The police move his bones so he starts acting like a real ghost

They figure out he was used in an attempted ritual and also that their Latin teacher killed him

The dig up his bones and rebury them on the ley line

Noah comes back

Given what happens later in this series, it’s very important to me that we remember Noah.

In conclusion

What this book does well:

Keeping readers interested by embedding small mysteries

Atmosphere and memorable locations

Evolving arcs

These are just a few things I noticed on my read-through of The Raven Boys. Stay tuned for further Word Wanderings posts and feel free to give suggestions for books you’d like me to analyze!

Personal Challenge: Pick a book you’re currently reading or an old favorite and try to figure out what keeps you reading, whether it’s little mysteries, character dilemmas or rising tension.

#the raven cycle #trc #maggie stiefvater #the raven boys #writing #writing advice #writers on tumblr #blue sargent #noah czerny #gansey #adam parrish #ronan lynch #word wanderings #my post

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toast-the-unknowing · 4 years

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What is your favorite pynch moment and/or quote?

Honorable mention to the scene in Blue Lily, Lily Blue where Ronan visits Adam at work and manages to, in one seamless chain of events, scare the shit out of him, piss him off, break into his car, and leave him a thoughtful gift; that was the moment that I put the book down and texted my friend holy shit, this is my jam.

But the scene I really come back to as a favorite is the acid pool in The Raven King, that moment of Ronan saves Opal – Adam saves Ronan – Opal saves Adam. It has a lot of elements that I love about them.

I love that Adam and Ronan’s romance isn’t just a story about one of them saving the other one, but that it’s really Adam and Ronan save each other; Adam and Ronan save themselves. We get to see an aspect of that here, where both of them need saving and both of them get to save someone, and all of it is done immediately, without thought or hesitation.

I love Opal as a character, and her individual relationships with both Adam and Ronan, but also how she fits within their relationship, the way that Adam sees this creature that Ronan created and loves and needs to take care of and goes okay I’m going to love and take care of her too, even though he kinda thinks he’s fucking it up. So I love this scene where Opal immediately understands what’s happening to Adam and how to fix it and she does it, even when she hadn’t expected anyone to come save her, because she saw Adam and went okay I’m going to love and take care of him too.

I love that Adam and Ronan make bad choices and make messy complicated choices and make choices that lead to arguments. I love that Opal’s only in Cabeswater because Ronan decided to leave her there, against her wishes – heartless or just necessary? I love that they’re in Cabeswater at that moment because Adam has made the decision – spur of the moment or responsible? – to go get her back. I love that right before that scene they’re arguing about the fact that Ronan dreamt Cabeswater and has been keeping it a secret, an argument where both sides have a point, but an argument that they immediately put away when they need to act.

I love that these boys are eerie, in canon, that they’re strange and unsettling and weird, that they aren’t just sparkling shiny anime superheroes. Not that there’s anything wrong with sparkling shiny anime superheroes, but I find it more interesting where there’s some mess. When your supercool magic talents sometimes mean that you create a pit of acid you regularly dream about dying in, or that you sit there blank-eyed while the plants that you summoned start to engulf you.

Obviously there’s a million great moments between them, but this has always been a favorite of mine. So as you can imagine, I was filled with all kinds of emotions about the fact that this scene, in particular, by name, got mentioned in Call Down the Hawk as an act of love on Adam’s part and a safeguard for Ronan against negative thoughts. Me too, boys, me too.

#the raven cycle #the dreamer trilogy #cdth spoilers #Anonymous #trc meta

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astudyinfreewill · 4 years

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I have a fun question, when do you think Adam figured out Ronan liked him, and HOW do you think he figured it out? I was always thinking, Adam is very observant, and Ronan was always looking at him, but at what point does looking betray attraction? But do you have any head canons or thoughts beyond this? Was it the hand cream? Or do You know of any fun theories? id love to hear them!

hey there!

of course this is all speculation, and i will explain my reasoning below, but i think adam first starts figuring it out towards the end of the dream thieves, and that’s partly because ronan’s behaviour changed, and partly because adam finally had the mental space to notice.

premise 1: i think adam is aware that ronan is gay before then, at least prior to the start of trb -- there is just no way in hell that the “i’m always straight”/”oh man, that’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told” was not meant as a double entendre. i mean, obviously adam is also calling ronan out on his claim that he’s always straight = honest, because we know that unlike gansey, he doesn’t buy into ronan’s “i never lie” shtick. but it’s definitely also a gay joke, like. come on. besides, there are hints that even gansey knows about it, or at least has guessed (noah clearly knows but it doesn’t count bc he can literally read minds), so you know if he’s clued into it, then adam definitely has (no shade to gansey but he’s not... the most observant person.)

premise 2: it is my view that adam has known that he’s bisexual even before then, definitely before he knew gansey and ronan. i don’t have hard and fast evidence of this beyond the fact that his povs have no discussion of a sexuality crisis whatsoever, and we know adam overanalyses everything, so... yeah.

premise 3: adam clearly already thinks ronan is attractive - “savagely handsome”??? going on a ronan-related rant in his FIRST pov in the FIRST book??? boy please - so he’s bound to be extra observant of him. but at the same time, ronan for most of the first two books is... exhausting, especially to someone like adam. he’s destructive, violent, rude, and on occasion downright cruel. adam has enough of that in his life. i don’t think he can afford to invest extra attention in ronan lynch -- as he himself would say: there is such thing as an emotional cost.

so, when does he notice?

personally, i think he starts noticing towards the end of the dream thieves. as for how he notices, as i’ve said above, i think it starts with ronan’s behaviour changing. ronan says in the epilogue of tdt that “Adam was different since making the bargain with Cabeswater. Stronger, stranger, farther away. It was hard not to stare at the odd and elegant lines of his face.” i take this to mean that while ronan has had a crush on adam for... ever, basically, literally as soon as he saw him and before even meeting him, his feelings have been steadily getting deeper; ever since the cabeswater sacrifice - so, ever since the end of trb - he’s been openly staring at adam more and more.

now, obviously, adam didn’t immediately notice this, but that’s because both ronan and adam are, to put it mildly, GOIN THRU IT in the dream thieves. ronan is at his most self-destructive, and he has a book’s worth of character development which ends with him finally overcoming his self-hatred. that also means he spends much of the book on his own, or apart from the other main characters.

adam is also under increasing amounts of stress (which is saying something) and undergoes a complete mental breakdown, and then also comes into his own as the magician. so, he’s a little too preoccupied to think about ronan’s increased attention. but when he finally gains clarity towards the book’s climax - literally as soon as he is able to think things through without being crushed by ptsd - he immediately realizes that ronan has paid his rent... which is a first clue of his changed behaviour, because as ronan himself notes bitterly, people don’t usually expect him to do nice things for others.

now, i don’t think adam quite knows ronan LIKES likes him yet at that point, but right after adam says “I know it was you. I figured it out. The rent.”, they share a long, very charged look: “he held Ronan’s gaze for just a moment longer, until something inside Ronan unwound and he almost said something.” that’s a look that says, “I’ve got your number. I know now that you care about people - that you care about me.” adam always pays attention, but now he’s started paying attention.

and in fact, to return to the epilogue of tdt where we find out that ronan is in love with adam, that is also the first time adam really catches him staring - and looks back: “He glanced at Ronan, eyebrows furrowed, as if sensing Ronan’s eyes on him. Ronan looked away.” that’s going to become one of the recurring themes of bllb -- ronan looking at adam, and adam catching him at it, and then adam returning the look. once he notices ronan’s increased attention, he can’t stop noticing.

it helps, too, that they spend a lot more time together in bllb (and subsequently trk) than they did in tdt, since more and more often gansey and blue are split off on their own, and ronan and adam are having their magic non-date dates. but mostly, as i said, ronan’s behaviour has changed -- he’s no longer a ticking time bomb, he’s no longer cruel to people because he hates himself, he’s no longer too draining for adam to like him as more than a friend; and adam’s circumstances have changed too -- he’s in control of his powers as the magician, he’s no longer living in an abusive household, and he’s starting to let other people in more often, which finally gives him the chance to consider new, different possibilities that might have seemed too difficult before.

TL;DR: i think adam’s been aware that ronan’s gay/interested in boys since at least the start of the series, and i think he becomes aware that ronan is specifically attracted to him at the end of the dream thieves.

#adam parrish #ronan lynch #pynch #trc #trc meta #this turned into a much longer answer than i had planned but what else is new #meta #mp #catalina-infanta #answer #my meta

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