#trc meta

[miseria-fortes-viros]

do u ever think about how niall lynch was a devilishly handsome son of a bitch who was impossible not to like, naturally commanded the attention of everyone in the room, told stories as easily as breathing, ruled over his own particular corner of the world, didn’t even seem real until you knew him, died facedown on a gravel driveway, and then do you ever think about gansey.

#ronan as the knight #his king fell and he pledged his allegiance to a new one #not knowing this one too was slated to die #anyway. anyway #gansey as niall lynch #one as the devil and the other as the king #ANYWAY. #helenaposting #niall lynch #gansey #barbi.trc #trc meta #the raven cycle

[crimeronan]

this is a bit silly but while i'm thinking about adam being low-empathy: another thing that hurt my feelings about Adam Discourse (TM) a few years back was the insistence among some people that you can't draw parallels between adam's dad and adam himself because adam's worst fear is becoming his father. this is probably uncharitable but a lot of it felt like it came from people who either hadn't been abused, OR people who HAD been abused but were Perfect Victims (TM).

like. adam isn't a perfect victim. he's vicious and temperamental and cold and easily frustrated and lashes out and cannot process his own emotions. he's stubborn and a control freak and a neurotic prey animal and he makes mistakes and he makes insane assumptions not just about himself, but also about other people.

it felt like some people read the "too much monster blood in him" line, when he's like Well I Guess I'm Broken Forever, & they were like oh nooo honey no baby you don't have any monster blood in you. you're not a monster and never could be

when the whole point is like. the whole point is that actually, adam COULD be. he could be!!! he's NOT a monster but he could be. pains are taken repeatedly to show that his first instincts are Not to nurture/care/be kind. he's (reasonably) callous about ronan's situation in the beginning, he doesn't give a fuck when kavinsky dies, his first thought about opal is "ugh i wish we could just get rid of her" and then he hates himself.

my point here is: he has to TRY. adam is trying so fucking hard for all four books. people who read him in bad faith read sins into him that he didn't commit -- wanting to hit blue once is equated to having actually hit her, etc. but people who stan him often have the opposite problem of acting like "monstrosity" is a quality that Good People couldn't have, and therefore adam can't have, because he is Good People.

adam isn't a monster. adam could easily be a monster if he stopped trying. the reason adam isn't a monster isn't bc he's a perfect victim, it's because he Gives A Fuck. u know??

#this post ended up long somehow. consider it me processing the strange intersection of dad and adam feelings today #(the post is about me. this is what the refrance.) #also i think it would be hot for adam to kill people and not care but that's a separate power fantasy thing. #is unrelated to how i consider and meta abt his canon arc. #trc #trc meta #adam parrish #abuse #violence

[ronanlynchdefender]

The conversation between Maura and The Grey Man about Gansey and Adam is so meta because they’re basically voicing the audience’s perceptions of the characters.

The narrative is framed so all of us think that Gansey is the Main Character: Richard Gansey and his band of merry men (Maura’s pov)

We all assume this, but as you read the series it becomes increasingly clear that Adam Parrish is the Hidden Protagonist of the narrative. His desire, his need, to control his own life permeates the narrative. Adam takes action even when Gansey is afraid to (stopping Whelk, making the sacrifice) and subsequently propels the plot forward.

This is where The Grey Man’s perspective comes in: Adam Parrish and his band of merry men.

I LOVE that he says this because The Grey Man is an incredibly perceptive character, and while him and Adam have little (if any) interactions, he still notices who is really running the show here. He recognizes that Adam is probably a lot like himself: a guy everyone overlooks but with incredible power to make the difficult decisions everyone is afraid to make. And I just love that The Grey Man, in saying this, shows Adam respect and gives him credit where credit is due.

So this little disagreement between Maura and The Grey Man about who REALLY is the Main Character of this story reflects us. We see Gansey as the protagonist, but we also see Adam Parrish fulfill this role as well. Sometimes, it appears that Adam is even MORE of the main character than Gansey (in my opinion).

And the truth is that they’re BOTH main characters just in completely different ways. It’s honestly insane to me that Maggie can have these two widely different character journeys running parallel to each other in the same series, but she does it. And because they’re so different the development of each entangles and clashes with the other in fascinating and volatile ways.

GOD. It’s just so good I feel like I could teach a class about these goddamn books.

#THE GREY MAN AND ADAM NEEDED INTERACTIONS #these two characters are honestly very similar and it would have been interesting watching them interact #at least we have the ‘adam parrish and his band of merry men’ moment #richard gansey #adam parrish #the grey man #trc meta #meta #trc #the raven cycle #trk #the raven king

[solanine-and-swords]

no because unguibus et rostro. yes it is literally “claws and beak” but it can also be interpreted very loosely as “tooth and nail”. i’m losing my fucking mind over it because it has so many layers. like yes adam and ronan both fought hard individually to be where they were in life, but they had to fight to be together too. but beyond that!! they are the tooth and nail. ronan is the tooth. he’s always associated with fanged animals and imagery (the snake, the shark-nosed bmw). he’s sharp edges, but in the way that broken pottery is. shattered, almost. there’s also a lot of focus on his mouth in other contexts. his smirks, him taking the pills with kavinsky, even just the words that come out of his mouth are all bite. meanwhile adam is the nail. yes everybody in the entirety of henrietta is in love with him, but what’s really fixated on by everyone is his hands. to the point where ronan literally breaks into adam’s car to give him something to make his hands feel better. (ronan’s love languages are something i could talk forever about too, but i’ll save that for a later date.) adam clawed his way to the life that he had in the books, and i think nails are a really good representation of that. yes he’s a little torn up. he’s chipped and bleeding. and in the exact same way that you get dirt under your nails, adam worries about being tainted by henrietta, and that his identity as someone from the rural south needs to be cleaned away before he can be someone of value. in the beginning of the series, he seems to really want to erase his history, and clipping broken fingernails feels like a really good analogy for that. additionally, the whole thing with ronan kissing/sucking adam’s fingers really seals the deal for me. healing each other. ronan’s mouth on adam’s hands. tooth and nail. unguibus et rostro. i’m going insane

#trc meta #the raven cycle #trc #the raven boys #trb #the dream thieves #tdt #blue lily lily blue #bllb #the raven king #trk #pynch #ronan lynch #adam parrish #joseph kavinsky #unguibus et rostro #book meta #meta #book analysis #books #literature #writing #maggie stiefvater #analysis #theory #trc analysis #trc theory #mine #hall of shame

[nibblette]

Did anyone else think Gansey was going avoid dying by going back into Glendower’s time the first time they read the Raven Cycle?

that’s what I thought the point of finding the 500yr Camaro tire was all about. I was sort of disappointed the series didn’t end that way on my first read. Also disappointed that ye olde car tire was a story dead end.

I also thought in some way that Gansey was Glendower in the past and Gwenllian was somehow his and Blue’s daughter.

#I also thought the creepy mask and Adam was going to be a bigger plot point #I got really hooked on that point the first read through #the raven cycle #trc #blue sargent #richard campbell gansey iii #trc stuff #TRC meta #adam parrish #ronan lynch

[baladric]

the thing i always return to is the wonder at maggie stiefvater's very specific talent for vivid and multifaceted characters.

like, the present marvel: the first dream sequence in dream thieves, when ronan dreams the puzzle box and then is stuck watching himself and thinks, "The exterior of this early morning Ronan didn't look at all how he felt on the inside." and based on everything we know about him, you expect the thought to continue into some musing about being soft in sleep, or looking young or uncharacteristically peaceful—and then he hits us instead with a thought of the brutal sharpness of his own body, "Anything that didn't impale itself on the sharp line of this sleeping boy's cruel mouth would be tangled in the merciless hooks of his tattoo, pulled beneath his skin to drown."

and he's so startled by this sharpness! he looks like a weapon, when all he wants is to dream of light—but we don't know that yet, right? here you've spent an entire book's worth of time with the externality of ronan, and the immutable certainty that his sharpness is cultivated—the shaved head, the tattoo, the jagged mannerisms and outspoken cruelty. and then we get into his head, and he's just as anxious and tangled as gansey or adam or blue! he's just as baffled by his own self as the rest of them—if not moreso, bc his trc arc specifically is so much about queer monstrosity. and just... stiefvater does this shit in single lines that sound like they belong in a siken poem, just tossed into the middle of other shit. "a miracle of moving parts," "you soft, spoiled thing," all of blue's brief and undwelled-upon little annoyances about being called sensible over and over again, until we finally get the bit about not thinking about the things she can't have (a phone, a big brilliant future, a kiss) and hence, her so-called Sensibility. noah's hands seeming "to belong fewer places than most people's."

she does this over and over again, redefining a whole-ass character w one sentence, and the thing is, i always think i've gotten used to this it!! but then i reread, another year older, another year farther along as a writer in my own right, and all new things jump out at me. and it's just awe-inspiring?? and regular inspiring. i don't think there's another writer that motivates me to create so profoundly as maggie stiefvater and i will cry forever about these children

#trc #the raven cycle #ronan lynch #the dream thieves #trc meta

[fandomrouletteburrito]

Thinking about how in Tsubasa after reading the entire story how it changes how you feel about all the arcs. Spoilers for the ending and Nirai Kanai and xxxHolic below

There is no happiness in the way the arcs end especially once they reach Tokyo end, there is a sense of completeness but never like: ah yes we are happy now.

The best they get is a sense of satisfaction at having reached the goal and saving people but you know the final goal could potentially take decades and is seemingly endless and that is daunting for the cast.

And once shit starts hitting the fan theres nothing but tragedy after tragedy, the loss of Syaoran, Fai’s near death, Sakura’s loneliness and powerlessness, Kurogane’s anxiety for the other shoe to drop, the ENTIRETY OF CELES, knowing theyre all trying to cope as best as they can but every world they’ve visited since Tokyo has only faced a massacre in Clone!Syaoran’s wake and how traumatizing it is and the pain of knowing he would never do it if he was in control. Not to mention Clone!Syaoran’s inner conflict of knowing deep down he loves Sakura but despite the soul he made it takes losing her WATCHING her DIE to finally bring him to the front however briefly it is.

And in the final end, Clone!Sakura and Clone!Syaoran remain in a state of limbo, kind of dead if we’re being brutally honest.

Like Tsubasa isn’t a story of a happy ending, it’s literally just coping with tragedy and loss. And I think this is what makes me love it so much, that yes all four survived but the cost was two main characters. Its not a satisfying ending, its just tragic, after suffering so much and setting everything right and even being able to live in the original timeline, the two beings that helped them survive this long don’t get to be in this happy ending. Syaoran sacrified his parents, his childhood, his freedom, his time, his chance at a normal life and he still doesn’t get to be with his Sakura all the time. Clone! Syaoran himself said there was a timeline where Sakura and Syaorn can never be together and the knowledge that there was going to be an even worse timeline is so horrific after all that suffering…

And if we want to get into Nirai Kanai, I think this is the only part of Tsubasa I outright sobbed, the cruelty of Syaoran SEEING Clone!Syaoran or his father and needing to FIGHT him and him STAYING DEAD, was so painful. How much Syaoran didn’t want to do it but he had no choice. Not to mention Watanuki had to do the same with Yuuko to help Syaoran(they really do be the same person huh?)

#trc #tsubasa reservoir chronicles #tsubasa chronicles #clone sakura #princess tsubasa #princess sakura #clone syaoran #syaoran li #tsubasa li #fai d flourite #kurogane #trc meta #watanuki kimihiro #xxxholic #trc nirai kanai #nirai kanai

[iwowzumi]

the raven cycle is kind of about magic but mostly it’s just about how mentally ill teenagers without access to therapy do some insanely weird shit to cope. yeah blue is a tree but she’s also taking out her anger issues on the hood of some kids car. sure ronan can take things out of his dreams but it’s mostly, like, manifestations of his grief and trauma. adam may be a murderous little psychic but he’s also dissociating pretty much constantly until the end of book three. and gansey is dragging them all along on his mildly delusional magical quest in a desperate attempt to give his life meaning after a near death encounter like he doesn’t have massive amounts of ptsd. none of this is a criticism btw it’s perfect actually

#the raven cycle #trc meta #the graphic novels n greywaren release have me in my Thoughts and Feelings sorry #like. they r all sooooo mentally ill. they’re just like me fr <3 #syd text

[wasted-on-dreaming]

Greywaren

Really, my most persistent thought after reading Greywaren is just:

What if Kavinsky was a Greywaren too?

#look #i gotta stay on brand #and my brand is 100% #joseph kavinsky #greywaren spoilers #greywaren #james says shit #trc meta

[thosebrotherslynch]

THE BOYFRIEND THING W ADAM SO TRUE about to write a whoel essay ab that

Yessss it drives me up the wall when someone falls in love and all their problems go away like love can cure trauma, poverty and depression. I am so happy that never happened to him.

#Greywaren #Greywaren spoilers #TRC meta

[miseria-fortes-viros]

richard gansey III: the king

blue sargent: the page of cups

ronan lynch: the sword

noah czerny: the sacrifice

adam parrish: the magician

the raven boys, chapter eleven

#the raven cycle #trc #richard gansey #richard gansey iii #gansey #blue sargent #ronan lynch #noah czerny #adam parrish #the raven boys #helenaposting #trc quotes #barbi.trc #trc meta

[crimeronan]

Wait wait I’m a big Adansey fan but what do you mean he would’ve killer himself if not for Gansey! I hadn’t heard that before do you have a post on the subtext or something? Thank you

i might be alone in my interpretation of this as someone who projects suicidal tendencies onto every character but adam has a point where he's musing about where he'd be now without having stopped to help gansey with his car that day & he concludes "probably he wouldn't still be at aglionby." possibly he'd just be a dropout working as a mechanic to save up to escape his dad (honestly.... FAR more practical, fiscally speaking), but adam is so intensely self-destructive and self-critical that i can Easily see that spiraling into "i have lost my will to survive. i don't care about anything anymore"

the main counterargument characterization-wise is "that wouldn't happen, adam's entire character is built around survival, he'd have figured something else out" but he wasn't the magician then and didn't have the capacity to become him yet (having not yet learned about love) and honestly i find it more compelling if it Could have happened. either way, adam was holding on to the cliff by his Fingernails until the moment he loved gansey and let himself be loved by gansey. so. if not suicide, then something miserable instead.

#well if not suicide he'd be dead anyway bc it's pretty clear robert would have killed him #but if he managed to stay alive thru both of those scenarios he still wouldnt really be. living. u know #replies #trc #trc meta #adam parrish #suicide

[astudyinfreewill]

YOUR LEYLINE THEORY IS TOO MUCH FOR ME IM GOING CRAZY

CONGRATULATIONS THAT’S HOW IT FELT TO WRITE IT UP 🤪🤪🤪🥴🥴🥴

#no but for real the girlies (gn) were going crazy in the chat #the ‘several people typing’ energy was FERAL and we kept going for HOURS #trc #trc meta #ley theory #thecryingclub #answer #imnotrealimsleeping

[bluesadansey]

unstoppable force (Adam’s canonical teacher kink) meets immovable object (Gansey being a professor’s soul in a teenagers body).

#meta #s speaks #adansey #adam parrish #richard gansey #trc #I’m sorry. but also Maggie wrote this so it’s on her I’m just calling a spade a spade #more insane when you think about their first meeting being Adam teaching Gansey about cars and Gansey teaching him about dead welsh kings #reciprocal informational exchanges defining their whole dynamic in that way … sapiosexual disaster bi bitches #it’s so funny to me that the greenmantle intro scene is def her way of establishing Adam as queer outside of his attraction to Ronan but w/ #bringing Gansey into it and yet the description of greenmantle sounds like a combo of Ronan and Gansey #and the language to describe his attraction is a downplayed version of the monologue flashback of Gansey being like the sun…chile anyway. #him thinking Ronan is so attractive I wish I could imagine him as a young hot professor but that’s just not his vibe… #so I take it you’ve imagined Gansey as your history prof many a time okay. #the raven cycle

[solanine-and-swords]

wait. waitwaitwait guys. ronan is the car crash. gansey is the broken car. adam is the car mechanic. SHIT. i’m too tired to elaborate right now but i am having galaxy brain level thoughts atm

#richard campbell gansey the third #gansey #ronan lynch #adam parrish #pynch #the gangsey #guess who’s back with weird and cryptic thoughts about the raven cycle! #the raven cycle #trc #meta #i guess??? #mine #hall of shame

[hermitmoss]

autistic gansey: the raven boys

literal thinking

All of the sources said that church watchers had to possess “the second sight” and Gansey barely possessed first sight before he put his contacts in.

It took Gansey a moment to realize that Ronan had made a joke, and by then, it was too late to laugh.

Gansey, misunderstanding, immediately asked her, “Why would you have to leave?”

“Coincidence?” Ronan asked. “I think not.”  It was meant to be sarcastic. Gansey had said I don’t believe in coincidences so often that he no longer needed to.

He said, “I don’t think that minor children are required to get gifts for their parents. I’m a dependent. That’s the definition of dependent, is it not?”

Several exasperated faces turned on Gansey. Maura said, “Well, he’s not going to just go away because you don’t want to deal with him.” “I didn’t say it was possible,” Gansey replied, not looking up from his splint. “I just said that it was what I would like.”

"His name wasn’t really Butternut, was it?" Gansey asked Adam in a low voice.

food sensitivities

Gansey said, “Tell me there’s no sauce on this burger.”  Dropping the strap from his teeth, Ronan scoffed. “Please.”  “No pickle, either,” Adam said

stimming

The area around him smelled strongly of mint from the leaf he chewed absently. 

He ran his thumb back and forth across his bottom lip, a habit he never seemed to notice and Adam never bothered to point out.

Gansey was crumpled on his bed, earbuds in, eyes closed. Even with the hearing gone in his left ear, Adam could hear the tinny sound of the music, whatever Gansey had played in order to keep himself company, to lure himself to sleep.

special interest

Gansey couldn’t resist talking about Glendower. He never could.

But Gansey never minded retelling the story. He’d related the events like they’d just happened, thrilled again

he was wondering if it was more than the ordinary curiosity people possessed when faced with Gansey and his obsessive accessories. He knew Gansey would find him overly suspicious, unnecessarily proprietary of a search Gansey was more than willing to share with most people.

“We talking about Gansey the third and his New Age obsession?” the secretary asked.

what he found was that Richard Gansey III was more obsessed with the ley line than he had ever been. Something about the entire research process seemed … frantic.  What is wrong with this kid? Whelk wondered

It was suddenly difficult not to be excited by the idea of explaining it all to her.

The easy way that he began the story, at once striding through grass and eyeing the EMF reader, let Blue know that he had told it many times before.

“If you’d just asked,” Gansey said, “I would’ve told you everything in there. I would’ve been happy to. It wasn’t a secret.”

masking and mirroring accents

Adam remembered finding him intimidating when he first met him. There were two Ganseys: the one who lived inside his skin, and the one Gansey put on in the morning when he slid his wallet into the back pocket of his chinos.  The former was troubled and passionate, with no discernible accent to Adam’s ears, and the latter bristled with latent power as he greeted people with the slippery, handsome accent of old Virginia money.

It was a default answer, she saw; he fell back onto his powerful politeness when he was taken by surprise. Also, he was still watching Adam, taking his cues from him as to how he should react to her. Adam nodded, once, briefly, and the mask slipped just a little more. Blue wondered if the President Cell Phone demeanor ever vanished completely when he was around his friends. Maybe the Gansey she’d seen in the churchyard was what lay beneath.

A few minutes later, when Gansey climbed into the front seat beside the pilot, she saw that he was grinning, effusive and earnest, incredibly excited to be going wherever they were going. It was nothing like his previous, polished demeanor.

There was something about the timbre of his voice that surprised Blue. It wasn’t until he spoke again she realized he was using the tone she’d heard him use with Adam.

This Gansey, this story-telling Gansey, was a different person altogether from any of the other versions of him she’d encountered. She couldn’t not listen. 

Gansey had always felt as if there were two of him: the Gansey who was in control, able to handle any situation, able to talk to anyone, and then, the other, more fragile Gansey, strung out and unsure, embarrassingly earnest, driven by naive longing. That second Gansey loomed inside him now, more than ever, and he didn’t like it.

some days Gansey wished that he could be him, because Adam was so very real and true in a way that Gansey couldn’t ever seem to be.

Gansey was first into the room, and he clearly hadn’t expected to find anyone there, because his features hadn’t been arranged at all to disguise his misery. When he saw Blue, he immediately managed to pull a cordial smile from somewhere. And it was so very convincing. She had seen his face just a second before, but even having seen his expression, it was hard to remind herself that the smile was false. Why a boy with a life as untroubled as Gansey’s would have needed to learn how to build such a swift and convincing false front of happiness was beyond her.

not understood/accidentally offensive/words coming out wrong

The Aglionby boy appeared puzzled for a long moment, and then realization dawned. “Oh, that was not how I meant it. That is not what I said.”

To his credit, the Aglionby boy didn’t speak right away. Instead, he thought for a moment and then he said, without heat, “You said you were working for living. I thought it’d be rude to not take that into account. I’m sorry you’re insulted. I see where you’re coming from, but I feel it’s a little unfair that you’re not doing the same for me.”

He hadn’t meant to be offensive but, in retrospect, it was possible he had been. This was going to eat at him all evening. He vowed, as he had a hundred times before, to consider his words better.

He’d managed to offend again, with no effort at all.

After a moment, he said, "Sometimes I’m afraid he’ll never really understand me."

I did tell him, right? I did say that we were to wait. It’s not that he didn’t understand me.

Words pressed against his mouth, begged to be said, but he kept silent.

But Gansey’s words had somehow become unwitting weapons, and he didn’t trust himself to not accidentally discharge them again. 

“My words are unerring tools of destruction, and I’ve come unequipped with the ability to disarm them.

specifically coming across as condescending

 She clearly hadn’t found him condescending.  Which was probably because she hadn’t heard him speak.  

“Sometimes he’s very condescending.”  Adam looked at the ground. “He doesn’t mean to be.

“Really?” Gansey asked, so innocently startled by this that it was clear that Adam had been right before — he hadn’t meant to be condescending.

“God, I’m sick of your condescension, Gansey,” Adam said. “Don’t try to make me feel stupid. Who whips out repugnant? Don’t pretend you’re not trying to make me feel stupid.”  “This is the way I talk.

honesty

Adam suspected Gansey’s preference was because Ronan was earnest even if he was horrible, and with Gansey, honesty was golden.

“So I think we deserve the truth. Tell me you know something but you don’t want to help me, if that’s what’s going on, but don’t lie to me.”

“I’m going to need everyone to be straight with each other from now on. No more games. This isn’t just for Blue, either. All of us.”

He wasn’t sure how to speak without hurting Ronan. He couldn’t lie to him.

“age-inappropriate”

Gansey himself sat at an old desk with his back to them, gazing out an east-facing window and tapping a pen. His fat journal lay open near him, the pages fluttering with glued-in book passages and dark with notes. Adam was struck, as he occasionally was, by Gansey’s agelessness: an old man in a young body, or a young man in an old man’s life.

In his best professor voice

He sounded so old, Blue thought. So formal in comparison to the other boys he’d brought. There was something intensely discomfiting about him

once again Blue got the sense that he seemed older than the boys he’d brought with him.

There was something very ancient about him just then, with the tree arched over him and his eyelids rendered colorless in the shadows.

“You haven’t been a dependent since you were four. You went straight from kindergarten to old man with a studio apartment.” 

Malory had been the first one to take fifteen-year-old Gansey seriously, a favor for which Gansey would not soon stop being grateful for.

journal is comfort object

Gansey retreated to his bed, though he didn’t lie down. He reached for his journal, but it wasn’t there; he’d left it at Nino’s the night of the fight.

Whelk held his hand out for the journal. Gansey swallowed.  He asked, “Whelk — sir — are you sure this is the only way?” The journal weighted his hands. He didn’t need it. He knew everything in it.  But it was him. He was giving everything that he’d worked for away.  I will get a new one.

alexithymia

He thought this feeling inside him was shame.

Gansey tried several different ways to think of the situation, but there wasn’t any way he could paint it that made it hurt less. Something kept fracturing inside him.

Gansey couldn’t begin to explain the size of this awfulness. He only knew that it burst inside him, again and again, fresh every time he considered it. 

some complicated longing to settle an argument that waged deep inside himself.

overwhelming emotions

 More than anything, the journal wanted. It wanted more than it could hold, more than words could describe, more than diagrams could illustrate. Longing burst from the pages, in every frantic line and every hectic sketch and every dark-printed definition. There was something pained and melancholy about it. 

 His bald expression held something new: not the raw delight of finding the ley line or the sly pleasure of teasing Blue. She recognized the strange happiness that came from loving something without knowing why you did, that strange happiness that was sometimes so big that it felt like sadness.

He couldn’t stand it, all of this inside him.  In the end, he was nobody to Adam, he was nobody to Ronan. Adam spit his words back at him and Ronan squandered however many second chances he gave him. Gansey was just a guy with a lot of stuff and a hole inside him that chewed away more of his heart every year.They were always walking away from him. But he never seemed able to walk away from them.

“too serious”

Things seemed to weigh heavily enough on Gansey as it was.

His voice was peculiar. Formal and certain.

~awkward

He knocked fists with Adam. Coming from Gansey, the gesture was at once charming and self-conscious, a borrowed phrase of another language.

“I don’t know what else to say.”  “‘Sorry,’” she recommended.  “I said that already.”

clumsiness and disorganisation

It wasn’t that he meant to be careless — as Adam told him again and again, “Things cost money, Gansey” — it was just that he never seemed to realize the consequences of his actions until too late.

[Ronan] stopped the recorder and said, “You’re dripping gas on your pants, geezer.”

Gansey crashed onto the driver’s seat.

Then there were the notes, made with a half-dozen different pens and markers, but all in the same business-like hand. They circled and pointed and underlined very urgently. They made bulleted lists and eager exclamation points in the margins. They contradicted one another and referred to one another in third person. Lines became cross-hatching became doodles of mountains became squirrelly tire tracks behind fast-looking cars

Not the tidy stacks of an intellectual attempting to impress, but the slumping piles of a scholar obsessed.

It looked like the home of a mad inventor or an obsessed scholar or a very messy explorer; after meeting Gansey, she was beginning to suspect that he was all of these things.

EfficiencyTM

Gansey derived a large part of his pleasure from meeting goals, and a large part of that large part was pleased by meeting goals efficiently. There was nothing more efficient than aiming for your destination as the crow flew.

RulesTM

They didn’t even have the authority to choose an alcoholic beverage. They couldn’t be deciding who deserved to live or die.

likes mechanical things (not counting the camaro because that’s just Too Many Quotes to compile)

He liked the little knobs and toggles and gauges of cockpits, and he liked the technological backwardness of the simple clasp seat belts.

not understanding/realizing things

Again, his face was somehow puzzled by the fact of their hand-holding.

It hadn’t occurred to Gansey that if the Camaro had been operating properly, fleeing would’ve been an option.

Gansey didn’t understand, but he nodded. 

And now Gansey was a king here, and he didn’t even know how to use it.

difficulty reading people/nonverbal cues not impacting him

Gansey suspected that none of them was being completely honest with their replies, but at least he’d told them what he wanted. Sometimes all he could hope for was getting it on the record.

One of Ronan’s eyebrows was raised, sharp as a razor.  Gansey strapped his journal closed. “That doesn’t work on me. 

He didn’t believe she was really offended; her face didn’t look like it had at Nino’s when they’d first met, and her ears were turning pink. He thought, possibly, he was getting a little better at not offending her

need for certainty

What Gansey needed out of life was facts, things he could write in his journal, things he could state twice and underline, no matter how improbable those facts were.

generally unusual ways of thinking

An astonished Roman historian commented, You look under rocks no one else thinks to pick up, slick.

general “strangeness”

Adam leaned toward her as if he was about to say something, but ultimately, he just shook his head, smiling, like Gansey was a joke that was too complicated to explain.

“ARE YOU LISTENING, GLENDOWER? I AM COMING TO FIND YOU!” Gansey’s voice, ebullient and ringing, echoed off the tree-covered slopes around the field. Adam and Blue found him standing in the middle of a clear, pale path, his arms stretched out and his head tilted back as he shouted into the air.

“You find it not normal?”  She could tell that he very much wanted her to say that he wasn’t normal, so she replied, “Oh, I’m sure it’s quite normal in some circles.”  He looked a little hurt, but most of his attention was on the meter, which showed two faint red lights. He remarked, “I’d like to be in those circles.

Gansey couldn’t keep the exasperation from his voice. “‘Strange’ doesn’t help me. I don’t know what ‘strange’ means.”

He was himself, but he was something else, too — that something that Blue had first seen in him at the boys’ reading, that sense of otherness, of something more, seemed to radiate from that still portrait of Gansey enshrined in the dark tree.

not knowing other people don’t know things he knows

“Gansey, seriously,” Adam interrupted, to Blue’s relief. “Nobody knows what quiddity is.”

“Nobody knows who Ned Kelly is, either, Gansey.”

Born This Way

A small voice within Adam asked whether he would ever look this grand on the inside, or if it was something you had to be born into.

just. this. the way he knows to think this, the way he instinctively compares them to aliens that humans mistreat and that he logically shouldn’t love.

They were like aliens, Gansey thought. Aliens that we have treated very badly for a very long time. If I were a tree, I would have no reason to love a human.

#richard campbell gansey iii #the raven cycle #autism #* #my meta #meta #autistic headcanon #disability #trc #s4v