#the more i think about cdth

[mellodramas]

if my younger sibling dreamed another sibling into existence for literally whatever reason, i probably would’ve killed myself in front of them to change the trajectory of their life forever (so really what i’m trying to say is i understand you declan i get it)

#i have 3 younger siblings and i love them all #so they better fucking love me back #the more i think about cdth #the more I’m So Declan i become #declan lynch #ronan lynch #matthew lynch #lynch brothers #brothers lynch #cdth #call down the hawk #trc #the raven cycle

[crimeronan]

last night i started thinking about how funny it is that aurora is supposed to be a perfect copy of mór except capable of love. because mór seems to have all the same shrewd intelligence and observational skill as adam, which can EASILY coexist with love, and yet aurora is simply..... a golden retriever wife. so all i can picture is mór like "fuck fuck FUCK how am i supposed to do this i don't know what feelings are like!! i don't know what love is like!! how am i supposed to make this woman capable of love if i've never experienced it!! what are people with feelings like"

.....

[glances at husband]

"...............a bimbo"

#the far more unpleasant possibility is mór purposefully making her 'too stupid to leave' but i dont wanna think about that right now #live in the funny with me #cdth #greywaren #greywaren spoilers #mór ó corra #aurora lynch #niall lynch

[kiss2012]

tbh the nathan part of greywaren was one of the weakest plotlines to him it felt like such a cop-out. oh of course neither ronan or hennessy were going to destroy the world! it was this other serial killer dreamer who conveniently doesn’t care about anything or anyone and is not rlly interesting and is also like the only brown guy in the books! not a fan……

#i feel like it was to make carmen more important to the plot but i think there were better ways to do that #and then liliana died to get the vision about him? would have been better if bryde became a visionary and then turned things inward #and gave the vision to matthew or ronan #at least bryde would have done something then #but maggie hates polyamory….immediately after hennessy kissing carmen and shrugging when carmen said “liliana!” #she killed liliana off 😔 rip why did u get so much page time in cdth and mi then girl… #greywaren spoilers

[garciapimienta]

btw I’m starting Greywaren

#not that many thoughts about mister impossible #i liked it better than CDTH in some aspects and I liked CDTH more in others so… idk I think both are 4 stars/5 stars/I can’t decide how many #one thing I did really like was that there was less farooq-lane (sorry idk if this is an unpopular opinion or not I just didn’t care for he) #*her #greywaren #mister impossible #dreamer trilogy #maggie stiefvater #books #reading #read

[ronseyz]

um. okay.

#2:45 am and i finished #the plot was more interesting than cdth but man… the magic of trc really is Not Here #i’ll probably talk more about it tomorrow i’m exhausted #right now i’m feeling the urge to go and read a greywaren plot summary but i’ll hold off #i don’t think i want to read it tho. all of the last 100 or so pages i read just made me sad lol #greywaren itself i mean. i don’t think i want to read the novel #it sounds like things just get worse from here from what i’ve heard. :/ #anyway. goodnight <333 #mi read

[squash1]

pynch was literally my favorite couple of all time but I really think (not even on purpose) maggie destroyed their relationship post cdth...like it became unhealthy in a way that never got addressed

i disagree so much and here’s why:

trc adam & ronan are teenagers. and they act like teenagers. they have incredible emotional intimacy for their age but they are still just kids who are not completely honest about everything & don’t really have to face deep problems within their relationship (the problems are usually external). there’s a lot more ease to relationships that exist in one place at a time when both people are at the exact same stage in their life which is trc ronan & adam. i think dreamer trilogy ronan & adam show the complexities of a relationship that has existed over a long period of time as the people in the relationship change.

cdth is the beginning of a new portion of ronan & adams dynamic because it’s the first time they aren’t tied together by place (same school, same town, same friends). adam goes to harvard and ronan is left at the barns, partially by choice and partially because he can’t really leave bc of his dreaming (mental illness coded). the dreamer trilogy is ultimately about ronan lynch more than adam, although ronan isn’t ronan without adam, and so we really see ronan’s struggle to find who he is in a context that is removed from adam and the rest of his friends. the dreamer trilogy is a portrait of what it means to move from being a teenager to being an adult and that includes the changes a romantic relationship undergoes through that transition.

mister impossible ronan & adam are not functional even though they still love and care for each other. this is mainly because ronan is lost and has chosen a path to being “found” that isn’t real or productive. but he has to figure that out. what ronan goes through in mi — distancing himself from friends and family, searching for people “like him,” and feeling ultimately just lonely all the time — was a necessary journey for him. the whole time adam is trying. and ronan is trying too. but they just aren’t in the same place but that doesn’t make their relationship bad, it makes it real. and then in greywaren, ronan is able to have a literal break from the world and work through his issues and realize what’s important and who he is and what he needs. and adam does the same thing — reevaluating his priorities and his future. they both are learning how to be truthful with themselves first, and then with each other. greywaren is the ultimate reckoning. and i can never ever say that ronan & adams relationship was destroyed after cdth because in greywaren we get this:

and if that’s not the definition of love, of finding your way back to each other, of unconditionally holding another person up, i don’t know what is.

#the ben wyatt thing is meant as a joke ! it’s ok if u feel like that #but i do think ur wrong soz #ask #pynch #ronan lynch #adam parrish #tdt #trc #mister impossible #call down the hawk #the dreamer trilogy #the raven cycle #blue sargent #richard campbell gansey iii #adam and ronan #the raven boys #blue lily lily blue #the dream theives #bluesey #the gangsey #gangsey #hennessy #jordan hennessy #declan lynch #matthew lynch

[lizpaige]

What's the Declan outside pov Pynch idea 👀

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

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

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

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

#ronan lynch #adam parrish #pynch #declan lynch #anon asks #anon #asks

[astudyinfreewill]

ADAM INFILTRATING BOUDICCA!!!! YOUR MIND!!!! pls elaborate the people need this

oh boy!!! unfortunately my brain is a little too fried from work (i just think video calls of over two hours should be illegal unless you’re bantering with the besties) to come up with any actual plot but like. ok hear me out.

i simply think that it’s such a tragic waste of potential to have this guy who is paralleled with criminals not once, not twice, not thrice but FOUR times (kavinsky/declan/the gray man/mór o corra) and not have him be a little criminal at least ONCE. in fact i genuinely thought, after we were introduced to the fairy market in cdth - what a fucking cool concept btw, and hey isn’t it insane that these were marketed as kids’ books in some forums?? - that this was the direction we were headed!!! bc like declan brings ronan to the market, and tells him to be cool and calculated and wary, but of course ronan is ronan, so that doesn’t end up happening so much. you know however who IS cool and calculated and wary and would have done so so well in such an environment? yeah, you got it, good old adam “lizard son” parrish.

there are hints of this grittiness potential throughout trc as well i think. for instance, adam is the one who thinks to get his dad’s gun at the end of trb; and granted, he actually does so out of protectiveness for his awful mother (because the one thing that keeps adam distinct from his shadier narrative foils is that he has a huge heart, and he keeps choosing goodness even when it’s not his first instinct) - but he still is the one who reaches into that seedier world, where ronan would rather wield a chivalrous sword and gansey shies back from weapons altogether.

we also know what adam is capable of when he doesn’t chose goodness, even if he usually does it for sentimental reasons still: for example, refusing to spare whelk after whelk threatened to kill gansey; or, more glaringly, hatching a nefarious plan to blackmail greenmantle when he threatened ronan’s life. yes he had good reasons for his actions, but he can and WILL go darkside if need be. my dude plotted out a whole criminal case involving grisly child murders specifically to make sure that greenmantle would not only be put away, but put away for a crime that had very good chances of getting him killed.

the other characters are aware of this too - greenmantle himself, yes, but we also get admiring comments from the other two overtly criminal characters in the series - from declan calling adam “a creepily clever little fuck” to the gray man thinking that adam is “cool and resourceful” under pressure and would handle himself well specifically in the context of a shootout. his “criminal adjacent” characterisation stays consistent with that in the trilogy, from scamming rich kids with blatantly fake tarot readings, to oh yeah— hacking into several government databases apparently???

so yeah, when boudicca was introduced as a powerful, shady organisation operating within the magical mafia world, of COURSE i thought adam was gonna be a part of that plot. i was not entirely serious about him infiltrating them since it’s an all-women collective, but he could certainly infiltrate their records if he so chose. a guy who can both hack into your computer AND scry into your thoughts? a guy who’ll point a gun at you AND call down lighting from the sky? that’s a scary fucking opponent, man. i wouldn’t want him for an enemy.

anyway yeah these are my thoughts on mob wife adam who would actually be a lot better at the mob life than his supposed mob husband ronan “let me just hand over my social security number” lynch

#adam parrish #trc #tdt #answer #ambra.txt

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

hoping this isn't a ~weird request but i would love to read your takedown/opinions of the failures of TRC as someone who was also reaaaally underwhelmed with how it handled an interesting setup/cast of characters and was left feeling very blah about the whole experience, and i'm having no luck poking thru your tumblr archives if it already exists :) no pressure ofc, enjoying your opinions on the new series regardless! (i personally deleted the ebook after struggling thru the first chapter oops!)

i was going to say "you have caught me on a day when i am crazy exhausted even after sleeping 12 hours so sure why not" but tbh i think that's giving myself too much credit re: my ability to resist this particular flavor of haterade, although it provides a nice justification. disclaimer that i haven't read anything from the original series since right after the raven king came out so i don't remember it super well. but like basically the problems with the raven cycle are two-fold: (1) the first three books are not very good (2) the raven king is the dumbest and most hateful piece of shit masquerading as a novel i have had the misfortune to encounter in my life. like you have to understand i went into this series having had it pitched to me but Dumb But Fun and for the first three books i was having a good time. i was often like "lol this is stupid" but i would say equally often i was like "aw my kids :')" in particular i remember that something clicked for me with BLLB where the books didn't get better but i suddenly like legit loved and cared about the characters and was invested in their relationships in a way where the flaws jumped out a lot less and i appreciated a lot of things stief had done and i made a pynch playlist and started drafting some fic and blah blah blah. and then the raven king came out and it was just, i can't emphasize enough, the worst book in the history of the printed word.

on point the first: the books are not great. stief comes up with some decent lines (funny similes, the occasional spurt of something pretty), and one of the things i will give her is that she can definitely set an Atmosphere (although this skill seems to have gone missing for CDTH) - monmouth manufacturing and fox way both feel like places that are just a bit too interesting to be real but in a nice way. overall though i find her prose weirdly stilted and artificial and tryhard. i think at some point i called her what taylor swift would be as a novelist, back when our most recent taylor albums were red & 1989, and i more or less stand by that - "losing him was like driving a new maserati down a dead-end street" feels like something stief could write, but instead of a 3-minute country-pop song, it's 350 pages of that. also i have genuinely never encountered an author worse at plotting. there's a weird and almost baffling shapelessness to the books that is truly like nothing else i've read in a bad way. like i said this a couple days ago but i felt like it gave me a new respect for every other bad to mediocre novel i had read in my life, because apparently those authors did all have some kind of basic skillset so fundamental i hadn't appreciated it until i read one who absolutely does not. and also the thing i have said before of, every book has a million chapters about the villain who has nothing to do with anything, and every single one of those chapters is boring as absolute fuck. the whelk chapters in TRB are sort of retroactively justified by the noah reveal, which on reflection i think remains the most successful thing she's pulled off, but the others are interminable and completely without reward for the reader.

even fans of the series seem to concede that plotting is not her strong suit, and the things people tend to like her for are (1) her writing, which... sure. i don't think it is good but you do you. and if i am forcing myself to be fair i will say that at the very least she does have a distinct voice and doesn't have that horrible flat YA Novelist Affect that has taken over what i sometimes feel insane swearing used to be a much more vibrant and stylistically diverse genre at least in terms of the things that made their way to my sphere of awareness. so. fine. and then (2) her characters. and like yeah the TRC crew is cute. they're fun. i liked that gansey was kind of insufferable and the books made no attempt to pretend otherwise. i did love classic scorpio depresso bean trauma freak ronan lynch, and i loved how as the series went on he was both a snarling anger machine and an idiot teenage boy with the most embarrassing crush in the world. i liked blue's ambition and her imperfect but passionate feminism. i loved adam parrish's teeth-gritted determination.

and i did absolutely fall for the pynch of it all. ronan lynch, who could have anything he wanted, desperate for the affection of the one guy who had no patience for his bullshit! adam parrish, who saw himself as so lowly, falling for this almost ethereal creature who dreamed beautiful things! the way ronan's main hobby was wallowing in self-pity but the person he was attracted to was the guy who refused to act like it wasn't time for ronan to grow the fuck up. the way adam had such a fraught relationship with anger, his own anger and that of other people, but he saw so keenly through to who ronan really was that while ronan's anger exasperated him, it never scared him or made him feel like he had any obligation but to be his honest self. the way hard-edged ronan dreamed adam lotion for his hands and labeled it in freaking LATIN, the way tense adam started finding a new respect for ronan without ever feeling a need to become more deferential or apologetic. i mean it was good shit. it was such good shit that i really and truly believed that while she was not the greatest writer in the world, stief must have built this particular dynamic between these two people on purpose. she must have deliberately planned for their slow-burning mutual attraction and deepening care to communicate these exact things about what their value was to each other - ronan giving adam space to dream, adam tugging ronan into reality - and while i was pretty sure the last book would be dumb, because all the books were dumb and she'd thrown a lot of balls into the air that she was not gonna catch, and especially because i had the sense she was going to want a neat happy ending which meant either gansey wasn't going to die (boring) or gansey was going to die but everyone was somehow going to be okay by the end anyway (stupid), i was also like, well at least pynch are gonna get together and it's going to be this really nice culmination of both their arcs.

hahahahahahahahahahahaha

the short version of why TRK made me feel so wild with rage was that it made extremely clear that everything i had enjoyed about the books up till that point had happened 10000% by accident. pynch is a good example of this. all that stuff i talked about above, all the push-pull dynamics of them, all the stuff that made them a good ship - it turned out that none of it mattered. none of it was relevant. none of it was even worth mentioning. because none of it, actually, was on purpose. adam and ronan get together by making out, which i respect. they do not have a conversation after that happens. not like, they hook up and don't took about it right away. i mean they don't have a post-makeout conversation IN THE ENTIRE BOOK. there is no moment where either of them says or even thinks, like - why this person. which is dumb for ronan because he has been so horny about adam, but hateful for adam because he is out of ronan's league unless we're being very clear about why this is a good fit! the stuff about ronan helping adam normalize his relationship to anger, lmao. nowhere to be found. instead we get gansey telling adam, "don't hurt him." repeat: we get gansey telling adam, who tries the hardest all the time of all people ever and who is half convinced he should be in jail for having feelings, to make sure he is nice to ronan, whose ENTIRE BRAND is "huge fucking asshole all the time for no reason." because ronan is "fragile." which like, sure. he's a half-orphan [at that point] with a fucked up life whose brain tried to kill him two years ago. but adam is an 18 year old paying all his own bills who moved out of his parents' house the day his dad DEAFENED HIM IN ONE EAR, and somehow this does not grant him any kind of special dispensation for care in the ganseyverse. and this is not ever in any way contradicted or challenged or complicated or even referred to later by the text. crime!

meanwhile, ronan... [pinches nose, sighs heavily]. again i said recently that the dream thieves should have told me her hand was not steady on the steering well. because what happens in the dream thieves is ronan meets someone who is like him but bad, and learns from him, and then figures out how to be himself but good. which is a fun sexy idea for a story, but the book fucks it up because ronan is too aware at all times of what a dirtbag kavinsky is and too untempted by his wild ways. there's no real fall, so there can't be a real rise. he fucks up his best friend's car, which he knows is also his best friend's number one most prized possession on earth, and the resolution to that is: hey dude my bad i killed your car but it's okay i dreamed you a copy of it. ???????? that's like parent who runs over your cat and says it's okay because they'll take you to the pet store tomorrow logic [realized in the middle of that i stole that image from sandman sorry]. i mean, in a vacuum, i guess it's not exactly. but like: ronan doesn't address the situation by learning anything about how not to be the kind of person who destroys something of great emotional value to someone he cares about. he addresses the situation by learning how to do his superpower good. this is not emotionally satisfying fantasy writing. it's hollow and stupid. and it's extra stupid because the book's attempt at an emotional resolution later down the line is that ronan needs to... hate himself less. which he can do by... realizing he doesn't hate himself. ??????? once again: empty. unbelievable. stupid. there's no connection there to, like, "now that i hate myself less, i can and should be less of a dick to everyone all the time," much less "one way of hating myself less might be to stop doing things that make me extremely unlikable." just: he hates himself less, he's no longer alone, he can dream whatever he wants, he's cool with his big gay crush now. weak. and like it was weak for me at the time, but reading BLLB i did think: well, the hand lotion. well, the trying to dream up a soul for the dream people. well, the big hug with blue at the end. ronan is growing and changing following his experience. it's kind of a shame we don't get his POV on any of this. but we'll probably catch up with him in the next book.

and again: no. i mean, we get ronan's POV, yeah. but none of it is reflective of someone like consciously trying to break the destructive and harmful (to self and others) habits he had forged in his grief. none of it conveys any awareness on the part of character or text that, like, deciding on purpose to be a decent human being matters. that maybe it's the kind of thing you should commit to before falling into a long distance relationship with someone who probably has PTSD from their abusive parents. that it can be hard, that it's rewarding. none of that. instead - i don't even fucking remember what. at one point he feels guilty about holding adam back and then he thinks, i'm not asking him to stay, just to come back, like ok that makes it so much better. you're just asking adam parrish, a steel whirlwind of ambition, to go to the ivy league college he has just about killed himself getting to because of how desperately he wants to escape the shithole town where he had his traumatic childhood, and then move back in four years' time. which again is not discussed. it's just taken for granted that ronan wants to stay at the barns forever. he tells declan he wants to drop out of high school [a choice being made by an eighteen year old two years after the traumatic experience of finding his dad's murdered corpse] and be a farmer and drive a tractor in circles on the property, which would be kind of funny given that his family farm is populated by dream creatures, except that like the book takes him weirdly seriously and also this is not intended as a metaphor. like his endgame in that series is that this traumatized teenager is living by himself on the barns fucking around and dreaming forever with like 3 friends all of whom are leaving town and zero ties to human reality or goals or desires of any kind and this is treated as a happy ending. even though by the way his mom got brutally murdered eight months before the stupid epilogue. but he's doing fine [stief hates women so bad]. [again it's SO funny that the first dreamer book opens with "ronan realized that his life was totally pathetic and depressing so he decided to move." like there was not this level of complexity present when you wrote the dumb epilogue!]

i keep forgetting about how ronan dreams into existence a weird little feral fawn creature/person and is bizarrely chill about it. also how his mom is his dad's dream and his little brother is his own dream and it's really explicit that his mom in particular does not have a personality of her own but just responds by giving whoever she's talking to whatever kind of person they want to interact with, which is the moooooost fuuuuuucked uuuup thiiiiiing eeeeeeverrrrrrrrrrr, and the books are just like. yeah this is normal and fine. [again sooo funny that in the dreamer trilogy declan is like "unbelievably fucked up that my little brother and mom are dreams." like yeah it is! where did you get that idea maggie. was it in the tumblr tags.]

what else. she ruined blue liking space, which didn't seem possible. blue doesn't like space and want big things because she's a smart spunky girl in nowheresville virginia feisty enough to dare to believe she can make her own life. no. it's because her dad is a tree person and trees like the sky because they grow upwards. whenever i tell people this i have to emphasize how much i'm not exaggerating or making it up. this is what it says in the text. she's like "oh that makes sense." ???????? i dwell on this one a lot because it's soooooo so so so stupid, but also because i think it really encapsulates the thing that makes TRK not just stupid but actively repellant to me, which is that you get the sense reading it that stief thinks it's better when things come from weird magic shit instead of from like real human characteristics and psychology. like for a series about friendship it winds up feeling to me weirdly and grossly misanthropic - none of these people are special or worth caring about because they are human people, it's all because of their magic Stuff. it's all because oh they actually WERE more special than everyone all along, not because of the choices they made but because they were born to it (why is ronan the only one who can take from the ley line without stealing? is it because of the kind of person he is? no. it's bc he's Special). ronan's dreaming, blue's treeness, and then gansey being actually all along a time-shifted resurrected friendship amalgamation creature who felt an instant kinship with his friends, again, not because he was a lonely teenage boy seeking out fellow weirdos to care about, but because they literally had met him before. adam, the only genuinely human character left by the end, meanwhile still is constantly asked by the text to apologize for his existence, not just in the "don't hurt him" scene but in the absolute nightmare section in the end where he goes back to his abusive parents' house for closure(????) and reflects primarily on how ugly and small his trailer was (?????????) and feels startled to discover an instinct in himself to help other adams who might be stuck like he once was, and then immediately conceptualizes this as something blue or gansey would think, which is so hateful i can't even process it. like adam at no point in this last book is acknowledged to have had a positive influence on anyone else even though he's better than the lot of them put together, but he has to kowtow to blue and gansey in his own brain for teaching him (a poor abused kid) that he might empathize with poor abused kids???? when to my sincere recollection NEITHER of them has ever like on the page demonstrated any kind of do-gooding impulse? their hobbies are myth-hunting and unskilled clothing manufacture? perfectly acceptable hobbies for a pair of teens but like? why does she hate poor people and victims of abuse so bad...

the big bad demon that is destroying the town is shaped like a wasp. gansey has a bee/wasp allergy and one time died from bees. these two things are never connected. henry cheng is upgraded to a main character because maggie heard you like diversity and now has a completely different personality than when he was an amiable preppy dbag who happened to be asian. now he has a mother in the mob and a tragic backstory about being kidnapped that taught him that you can't let fear rule your life and if you're scared you should be scared and then do it and be happy anyway, which is pretty good advice for things like an irrational fear of closed spaces that can't actually hurt you but really not applicable to someone who both does literally have a deadly allergy to bees and also has spent the past four years traipsing willy nilly all over the place not even bothering to keep his epipen with him. it turns out gansey's big moral lesson has nothing to do with for example his obsessive desire to control his friends but actually like ronan he just needs to love himself better and realize that his friends care about him after all. please notice again that ronan and gansey, rich boys acting out, need to love themselves more. this is dumb but if this was like the thesis of the whole series i would be like, that was stupid but whatever. but what of adam parrish, a poor abused kid who was abused so hard he is now a poor abused disabled kid? does he get self-love? no. he gets to realize that his rich friends have made him a better person, and be relieved that he's escaped from poverty because of how the aesthetics were bad. I MEAN IT'S SOOOOOO CRAZY AUGHHHHHHH

i forgot when i was talking about henry cheng the scene where blue and gansey go to the asian kids' house and are like "wow such diversity so culture," which is like a nightmare edward said had once. like they're just so excited to have discovered this exotic exciting new world and to learn about things like how henry cheng makes asian jokes because if he says all the bad things about himself first then other people won't say them. and i shit you not, the entire sequence is done in narration, with spoken lines appearing in italics in the middle of descriptive paragraphs, not rendered with dialogue as an actual scene, a technique she doesn't use anywhere else that i can recall and which really serves to just be like... here is this Mass of Asianness, as opposed to being normal about it and being like "here's some asian kids having a party." i haven't seen anyone comment on this technical feature but i think about it all the time because it makes me feel insane. it's one of the few things i've read in the past however many years where i read it and was like "i guess i was naive before about racism." like it's not that i didn't know but i was like, wow in 2016 you can still just transparently have your entire ability to conceptualize scene and narrative totally warped by an attempt to feature non-white people and no one will be like, hey we're all unlearning a lot of stuff but maybe let's rethink this before we go to print. there's a scene where ronan jokes about henry's mixed-raceness by saying "which half" which i do think is stief being unaware of the optics bc she's dumb but still comes across real bad and then there's also a scene where ronan does a "vaguely offensive" imitation of henry's voice which i truly have no fucking idea what the hell that is supposed to mean on a literal concrete basis other than making fun of an asian kid's accent. in both of these cases gansey and blue are disapproving and adam snickers and it's like, ok so pynch is racist now. cool. who asked for this, maggie. and also see above re: i really gaslit myself into thinking that one of the points of this series was that ronan learns to be a better person. my bad! (he sort of attempts at one point to make up with declan about how ronan has treated him so bad and also ronan was obviously his dad's favorite. but like his way of doing this is he gives him a toy he dreamed called a Orb. if i were declan i would throw his Orb back in his face. but like that's how broken the ethos of these books is. a heartwarming reunion between two brothers torn apart by the death of the father that they both equally lost hello declan is also a teenage orphan - and it's just. here's some garbage i got you. i didn't even spend money on it. it just happened.)

in addition to ronan's mom the lady bad guy also dies a horrible bloody death that feels a lot more gratuitously fucked up than any of the man deaths in the series. oh i forgot about how blue's mom is dating a hitman who killed ronan's dad and ronan just like doesn't care about this after the first five minutes at all. and neither does anyone else. and then he wanders offscreen... i forget why. we never get any intel on why blue is destined to kill her first love if they kiss or if that would have happened with anyone but gansey or if she and gansey can kiss after he's resurrected or what. like the prophecy that kicks off the series, and just: nada. gansey sells his beloved home to bribe aglionby into letting ronan graduate and the two of them never talk about this and the text never clarifies whether ronan bothered to graduate or not (and in CDTH it turns out he didn't). like another way this alleged series about friendship is weirdly misanthropic is i really was not convinced by the end of it that these people were friends. none of them are seen ever enjoying each other's company or thinking well of each other outside of the two romantic pairings and gansey going apeshit about how awesome henry cheng is. also gansey's whole big quest for meaning blah blah, like i don't super care that glendower is dead, i think you could write a good book with that moment working thematically even though it does fuck with your continuity because who the fuck were the three sleepers. what was with those birds. (there's a lot of mysterious/spooky shit that never gets addressed and like... again i think you could write a book where that works, i don't like to be prescriptive about this stuff, but again: play stupid games win stupid prizes. write a dumbass book that invests a lot of time in the importance of its magic and worldbuilding, and i will get annoyed when your magic and worldbuilding is dumb as fuck and/or totally pointless.) but it's like ok so then the idea should be that the whole point of gansey's glendower quest was actually an internal one, that the payoff of SIXTEEN HUNDRED PAGES of this is some kind of life lesson or emotional shift or whatever. and the payoff is that gansey realizes his friends love him (which again: but do they though? like do they really?), and that he and blue and henry take a gap year. that's the big exciting finale. a year off before gansey goes to college, with his true love and a guy he first hung out with eight months ago. HELLO? like who gives any kind of a shit about that. about any of this. what the fuck was all this for. this all happened so that two rich teenagers could like themselves better. are you fucking kidding me maggie? hateful!

anyway. i'm sure at the time there was more i was forgetting because this book was sooooo boring and every single thing that happened in it was stupid. i feel like this was very incoherent but in my defense these books are hard to critique coherently because they are, again, so stupid. CDTH from what i remember reading it through the first time and continue to pick up now like hangs together as a book better certainly than TRK did but my experience is such that every time she does something passably right i truly can only be like, wonder how she's gonna fuck this one up to kingdom come.

#askbox #the shmeamer shmilogy #the shmaven shmycle #i had a bunch of stuff under that tag at my old now deleted blog but not this one

[theravenkin]

this is gonna be me projecting (and also losing my FUCKING MIND over finishing greywaren five minutes ago) but is it just me or was everyone in that goddamn book autistic

first of all: the declan childhood flashbacks...that boy is autistic as SHIT. i'm giving maggie the benefit of the doubt here and telling myself that she was implying that and not just making a joke about "haha guy is uptight and no fun as an adult he only sorted things and enforced rules and structure as a kid cus that's funny" because oh my god?? also as an adult he has "declanisms"- phrases he uses for certain situations like categories...scripting... declan baby. he is the most autistic babygirl i have ever seen holy shit oh my g

i've also always related to ronan and a big part of that is because i've always read him as autistic. i mean i've always read all the original trc characters as autistic, to be fair. but i mean? are t they? (yes, they are, because i said so. it's my special interest, i get to assign the autism)

now i understand that the larger metaphor is about chronic illness, and i'm in love with that. i don't think autism is the main thing there. but i don't think it's not there, just as depression and bpd (imo but thats another post) aren't not there. (it's art, it's literature, it's open for interpretation.) but what i keep thinking about: chronic illnesses like epilepsy, hypermobility disorders, mitochondrial disorders, and several others mt end to be comorbid with autism. and as someone who is both autistic and deals with chronic illness/chronic pain (and who has several friends who are in the same boat), autism and chronic illness often seem intertwined to me. idk, just thoughts

ALSO. y'all heard people comparing being autistic/neurodivergent to speaking a different "language" than allistic/neurotypical people? THE WHOLE THINF ABOUT THE DREAM WORLD SPEAKING A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE THAT COULDNT BE TRANSLATED INTO ANY HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. thinking also about how autistic people so often feel like (and are compared to) aliens or otherworldly beings. how changeling children in folklore were probably just autistic kids but were etched in canon as erdrich creatures. how sometimes i wanna become that eldritch creature that others seem to think i am...

also, also: the theme of masks and "other selves" running throughout the entire series, even in trc. declan is the most obvious masker as an adult; he has to create a persona and STICK TO A SCRIPT OF THW SAME WORDS ALL THE TIME in order to feel like he's functioning and got his shit together. and then hennessey and jordan--hennessey creates a version of herself that she feels is more palatable, more socially acceptable, and that's who does all the soft skills of their operation early on. adam creates a false version of himself. ronan lies to himself about who and what he really is. matthew discovers that he's just been acting like who others want him to act like all along--that he's been suppressing his emotions and wants and needs in order to make others happy. and i know that this whole theme can translate into a lot of things, but what i've read it as since cdth is masking with autism/neurodivergence.

anyway. this has been my greywaren manifesto. i am sorry. (i'll be back later.)

#i am so exhausted #that book literally got me overheated as i was reading it #i have so many thoughts #and i need to scream and bite something #greywaren #the dreamer trilogy #tdt #cdth #mi #mister impossible #ronan lynch #declan lynch #matthew lynch #the lynch brothers #adam parrish #pynch #jordan hennessy #carmen farooq lane

[crimeronan]

in the irish language the fadas (accent marks) are Very important for spelling & misplaced/missing fadas can change the entire meaning of a word or sentence. it's less like spanish accent marks (correct me if i'm wrong but my native spanish speaking friends have told me they don't matter a Ton??) and more like spanish ano vs año. there's even a perfectly analogous irish version of this: cáca (cake) versus caca (shit. dung. poop. turd. cowpie. smely brown). if you hop on google and look up 'irish name fadas documents' you'll find a LOT of examples of irish names being misspelled on official documentation like medical cards and passports in/around the UK; the US which is home to a Very Sizeable irish-american diaspora Also doesn't allow fadas or accent marks or 'special characters' on birth certificates. (which has effects on many Many more languages than just irish)

i'm not at all offended or upset by people casually dropping fadas from the names of fictional characters Especially when typing them is a Gigantic Pain In The Ass on a desktop, and Also Especially when i don't know SHIT about how to use 99% of the unfamiliar characters in other people's languages. but! the accent marks in mór ó corra Do have an impact on both how the name is pronounced and what it means. they are vital components!

this is not a demand for people to cease dropping the fadas btw i truly don't mind or care, i have no emotional horse in this race. this is simply kitkat seeing a chance to infodump at the fortunate crossroad of two hyperfixations and fucking Sprinting with it. the world bestows upon me a variety of different mór tags and i start Vibrating At The Speed Of Sound like omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg can i tlak about her name tho. please please please blesse belelapsseee i'm fucking DYING to talk about her name,

#side note: hennessy looking at ronan's birth certificate and going 'how did you not know this was forged' #'what. how WOULD i' 'your name is fucking rónán. you have fucking special vowels. you're fucking ebony dark'ness dementia raven way' #'my name is spelled HOW ????????!!?' #(both ronan and rónán are accepted common spellings of the same name. so it's extra funny if niall just Did That. For No Fucking Reason) #cdth #horrible nightmare trauma pals #for the tags #pretty sure i've dropped the fadas in mór's name myself especially in 2019ish pre starting to learn irish. because. i am lazy #but i think different spelling systems and different importance of different linguistics is so interesting....... #mór ó corra #i talked extensively about the name meaning already like forever ago when theorizing abt dreamer trilogy. now i have to be more annoying

[faeparrish]

What did you think about Adam apparently trying to talk himself out of being in love with Ronan when he went home to st Agnes every night?? It sounded so prosey but it didn’t feel like it was supported by the text? Like I felt the Opal story and CDTH did nothing to indicate that

omg sorry i only just saw this q !! but yeah idk i’ve been thinking a lot about that recently. i think with certain contexts it does make some sense to me? not that adam would want to stop loving ronan but that he’d feel like he should stop loving him. that ending things sooner rather than later felt like the safer thing to do for both of them, emotionally speaking. having said that, i feel like if we’d been in adam’s head at all through trkopal or dreamer trilogy, it would’ve made this information less surprising (another loss for the adam pov agenda rip). i have a lot of thoughts on this tho and i ended up writing a lot more than i intended to so i’m going to get into it under the cut !

ok so first off, i think in terms of adam’s arc in dreamer trilogy (or what we saw of it lol) it would make a lot more obvious sense for him to be having that dilemma. at that point he’s actually living in this version of himself that can’t coexist with the version of him who chose a life with ronan. it did kind of surprise me that he’d been feeling that way in the opal story, but then again that story was only told through opals eyes so we only really got bits and pieces of the full picture. we weren’t in adam or ronan’s heads. i think it’s kind of interesting that maggie went back to it from a sort of omniscient point of view in greywaren tho — she tends to do that a lot, like retrospectively add new context to previous scenes by changing perspectives. i guess a perk of writing multiple points of view is that you get a novel filled with unreliable narrators, which means you can withhold information from readers by having characters misread or ignore certain aspects of a situation.

going back to what you said tho i feel like some people would read that section you mentioned and take it to mean that he was going back on his conversation with gansey in trk or that he didn’t want to be with ronan. i don’t think that’s it at all - i think he saw that they were heading towards a future that couldn’t hold their relationship without either of them having to compromise some fundamental part of their lives. and these were compromises that neither of them could make or would let the other make. it was also a conversation they weren’t having; we know they weren’t properly communicating at that point, not in the way they perhaps should’ve been given their situation. but it’s also heavily implied that the reason they weren’t voicing their concerns was because they both knew they wouldn’t be able to fix these problems by just voicing them. they were going to go in circles: adam didn’t want to do long distance; ronan couldn’t move to boston; adam could go to a closer school but ronan would never let him do that.

i think it’s also important to note that they were both at a crossroads in their lives that summer. they’d survived past the point where they thought they would, and now the things they thought they wanted in life were starting to feel different to them. everything was going to shift when adam moved away. they both knew something about their situation had to change but neither of them were ready or able to make it happen. and so they spent a blissful summer trying to avoid confronting it, because it hurt too much to admit that it all felt impossible.

i think we should also remember that we didn’t have any povs from adam in dreamer trilogy OR the opal story. every time we saw the pair of them interacting in dreamer trilogy it was through ronan, who was absolutely in denial about how hard it was going to be for them (see: his theory of plausible deniability at the beginning of cdth). we have to base our understanding of adam’s behaviour on outside observations of him. ronan’s pov in cdth does mention how tumultuous adam’s mental state had been during that summer, especially when he found out he was accepted at harvard. he was anxious about starting something he’d been working towards for years, and he was anxious about leaving ronan and having to deal with the reality of their relationship outside of the barns. it makes sense that adam, who is generally less in denial about harsh realities than ronan, was probably having a silent dilemma over it. he’s an incredibly practical character, he over-analyses everything, there’s not a single outcome of a situation that he wouldn’t consider. there was no way that he hadn’t at least touched on the possibility of having to end things with ronan, however painful that outcome is. he was probably debating whether it was worth dragging themselves through something that was inevitably going to hurt them, or if it would just be easier to confront it head on. it’s one of those things that sometimes happens in relationships where, yes, the love between the two people is strong and present, but the love isn’t the problem. it’s their circumstances. sometimes you can’t see a way to fit your life and your relationship together, sometimes you can’t find a compromise that works, and i think that’s what adam was afraid of. he associated ronan with the magic part of his life. in his mind, magic and harvard couldn’t coexist.

the problem adam clearly had was that while this self-preserving and practical side of him was trying to reason it out (i.e. if you convince yourself you don’t love someone then you save yourself the pain of losing them), the more emotional side of him couldn’t fathom not loving ronan. as soon as he was with ronan again, the reality of loving him was too tangible. which also fits into why it feels slightly surprising to learn this information: we pretty much only saw adam when he was with ronan in trkopal, and (as we now know) every time he was with ronan he forgot everything he’d been telling himself when alone. it became impossible for him to imagine ever throwing their relationship away for anything. i also think that’s why that line is so sad. ronan meant so much to him that adam couldn’t convince himself to step away and save his heart from further pain.

and then we have ronan. he’d essentially been having the same dilemma over their situation as adam. distance from someone makes it easy to convince yourself that things won’t work out. isolation and distance makes it even easier. which is why (amongst other factors) it reached a point in book 2 where ronan, more isolated and distanced than ever, ended up being the one to call it. because ronan sees things in black and white and adam tends to focus on the grey areas. because ronan is driven by impulse and adam is driven by considered decisions. because at that time, ronan couldn’t exist in multiples; he was already being pulled in so many directions by his human side and his magic side. he didn’t know how to exist as both: as soon as one thread from his human life came loose, he was unable to contain the rest. adam, however, has always existed in multiples. student and logician, man and boy, etc. his life is a balancing act. he’d balanced friends and school and magic and work and an abusive home life; he could balance this too. he could hold on to this. to quote adam himself, he wanted it too much. even after ronan had essentially ended things between them, adam still found somewhere safe for ronan’s body, still came back to visit him, still risked his life scrying in order to find him. it’s like adam said in greywaren, ronan was where he stored all the reality. with the direction he was going in his life at that point, if he lost ronan, he was losing the one person who knew the truest version of him — he’d essentially end up losing himself fully.

so yes. i think considering everything, it does make sense to me that adam had that dilemma because it fits with the way he behaved in dreamer trilogy. it also feels very realistic. everyone has doubts, or considers cutting loose to avoid the risk of heartbreak. i think it’s quite an accurate depiction of how a lot of people behave and feel in relationships, especially when it’s your first long-term relationship, and especially when you were never taught how to properly and healthily communicate (which neither of them were). it’s hard to imagine a way out of the problems you’re facing, especially when those problems feel out of your control. but i think for me it only solidified how strongly adam felt for ronan, because even with those fears and those doubts he was never going to walk away. no matter how much easier it may have felt to do so, he always came back.

#ask #doughfaceddcpig #greywaren spoilers #adam parrish #pynch #this is quite long sorry 😵‍💫 i went on a slight tangent but i had a lot of thoughts!

[robobee]

If I'm gonna be honest I think Hennessy would hate Henry. I think due to her similarities with Ronan she would find him deeply annoying. However there's still a lot of potential there. I think she'd be really intrigued by his hidden fairy market past and would be pissed off that he's not more outwardly evil about it. And also maybe she would consider Seondeok a milf.

oh they'd hate each other 🥳🥰 trk henry and cdth hen at least. but the time skip makes things interesting cause the question becomes whether the urge to piss Ronan off is bigger than the two-cats-raised-hackles effect they'd get interacting with each other (at least initially).

as for what you said about the evil part 🤓👆 the epilogue para on the chengs implies PERSISTENT infighting so I do fully believe he gets so much worse after the road trip. sarchengsey breakup my beloved

additionally if we're talking post breakup verse she'd be sooo fascinated by how awkward the dynamic is with everyone else (esp since pynch never considered him part of the group at all) and henry would take the L of being out of his own turf to shut up thus seeming approachable and bearable. shed find his perpetual beef with the Lynches hilarious and he'd find her complete lack of care about dreaming grating. it's a recipe for a beautifully toxic heterosexual dramedy

also I feel seondeok would NOT be fucking with a new dreamer beyond the urge to use them as a free supply source (and hen is not easily manipulated in this regard which makes her not worth it). MOR and seondeok though... well. you know. you know what they're doing

#i just think theyd have great hate sex but like not HATE bc they dont even care abt each other like that #nobody understands that henry and henessey are a venn diagram of a very similar personality and THAT is what peeves ronan the most #delusionposting #im writing something i swear you just have to hear me out <- man who regularly Straight Up Hallucinates his blorbos

[theanimalsarecalling]

We like to point out how much Adam and Declan are like each other, but they're really pretty different too.

First, Adam's an introvert, whereas Declan's a canon extrovert. It's easy to mistake Declan as an introvert in CDTH, where we first really get to know him, but that's him living the most unhealthy version of his life, because he's depressed and in hiding. Whenever Declan's happiest, he's out partying, or dating, or networking or schmoozing senators. Can you imagine Adam doing any of that? Ronan, who hates to be part of the crowd, would never have fallen for Adam if he did those things.

Second, Adam likes to maintain control, but he really only applies it to himself and his own autonomy. He never tries to control Ronan or really any other character. Declan is just plain controlling, especially where his brothers are concerned, a consequence of anxiety and the parentalization he experienced.

Adam, on the other hand, is not particularly anxious. He sometimes gets anxious about specific things, like the hearing with his father or moving to Harvard, but it's nothing like the free-floating anxiety that both Ronan and Declan experience. (It makes me wonder if this is something they inherited from Niall, and all his braggadocio was just a cover-up for anxiety.) Adam's really pretty resilient, where Declan and Ronan are both brittle.

Also, Adam is a lot more cold and calculating than Declan. Declan likes to think he's those things (as he supposedly assembles his criminal empire), but a lot of his actions are really pretty impulsive - from dropping everything to move his brothers to Alexandria (not that Ronan went), to dropping everything to follow a girl to Boston. The only potentially impulsive thing I see for Adam is stealing the Camaro and making the deal with Cabeswater. But really, that was more seizing an opportunity because he already knew what he wanted.

Which shows how different their relationship to magic was. Adam grew up not believing in magic, but when he discovers its real, its an opportunity and a way to gain power.

Declan grew up with magic, but it was something that made him powerless, rather than powerful. Growing up at the Barns was just as incompatible with Declan's needs as the larger world is with Ronan's.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this except to say that Declan will probably be key to saving Ronan, because he's the only one with real knowledge of the Lynch's past, even if that knowledge is incomplete and poorly understood. It also means Dauntless Declan's going to have to do the bravest thing he's ever done: tell the truth

Adam, of course, will be key to saving Declan because he loves Ronan, and let's him be himself, and loves magic, and sees the future in all of its possibilities. He will be Ronan's future.

And Matthew's role in this? Somebody has to keep the present in perspective.

#ronan lynch #declan lynch #adam parrish #the dreamer trilogy #the raven cycle

[squash1]

THANK YOU FOR ALSO LOVING GREYWAREN that book made me go from slightly obsessed with this whole little universe to being VERY obsessed, and I suspect I'll never stop being a menace about it <3 it did THINGS to my psyche

i know u just said some favorite scenes from greywaren, but as a fellow lover of that book, I just have to know: what are some other things u really love about it?

THANK YOU FOR ASKING. FINALLY. SOMEONE ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

declan lynch autistic child core. as a child i was exactly like child declan and it warms my heart.

jordan and declan are the best couple and if anyone tries to say they’re not u should shut up. (i love all the couples equally but i love them more).

hennessy is so fucking funny like what an icon. her hatred of pennsylvania is so special to me. i don’t even hate pennsylvania i just admire her commitment to the cause.

the thing with declan’s moth. enough said

also declan and adam bonding and (this is mister impossible but whatever) meeting up to have a Ronan Lynch Support Squad Consultation….yes.

THE MATTHEW-BRYDE DYNAMIC. “YOU ARE THE SADDEST DUDE IVE EVER MET!”

the juxtaposition of niall and ronan in the chapters at the barns. aghhhhhh. and the glimpses into niall’s past like…..i wouldn’t call it a redemption arc but the careful way he is humanized WITHOUT being redeemed. and seeing what ronan saw in him. but also what declan saw

DECLAN LYNCH GANGSTER ERA

on the seventh day the lynch brothers became friends again. BECAME FRIENDS AGAIN

but basically. if trc is a coming-of-age series where you see these kids delighting in and struggling with the magic on the edge of adulthood. the dreamer trilogy is like the loss of childhood innocence. cdth and mi are ROUGH at points. it’s much harsher feeling than trc, more heavy and sad and action-packed and suspenseful. and greywaren is like…the tentative peace you make at the end of the transition to adulthood. ronan’s finding his feet, seeing old friends, proposing. declan is settling down, letting go of his childhood wounds. it’s not an ending really but it’s where things start to be okay. and that’s how it feels. and that’s why (for all the plot holes and rushed pacing blah blah blah) it’s so. fucking. good.

AND CAN I JUST SAY. all the ppl who say that post-TRK pynch became “bad” and “toxic” and “isn’t as good as in trc” and “they shouldn’t be together anymore”……..i hate those ppl w my whole heart bc. i’m sorry, but if you read the scene in greywaren where their, like, celestial soul energies found each other in dreamspace and reconciled and apologized and forgave (in. disembodied dream soul form…whatever) and WERE WANTED THEY WERE WANTED THEY WERE WANTED and decided to love and help and heal one another and you STILL think that???? i just don’t know how to help you!!! sorry u can’t enjoy mature healthy relationships where people have gone through bad periods and so the relationship suffered for a while and then they recalibrated and decided to continue to grow together, but i’m built different :))

#ask #all the love in the world to anyone who disagrees no tea no shade it’s fine ur just wrong #greywaren #trc #ronan lynch #adam parrish #the raven cycle #pynch #adam and ronan

[a-tiny-sloth]

hi! i was curious about the john everett millais painting you are discussing, so i did a little re-reading and searching and i think the answer to your post's original question is no... but also yes! lol i say this because in cdth, we learn that hennessy's forgeries are not direct copies but rather works in the style of the original artist, so i think the described painting is something that looks like it could be a millais but is not actually a 1:1 match with one specific existing work. i do think the painting you suggested was a reference and is the closest match, based on the subject's posture! im also wondering if millais's painting 'yes or no' was a secondary inspiration; the pose isn't even close to the description, but the woman is titian-haired and holds something more akin to an illustrated card behind her (though it isn't hidden from the viewer). i think this was really fun to think about! i'd love to know if you found any other interesting art-related details in the trilogy. :)

you're of course absolutely right! can't believe this hadn't even crossed my mind! and i think you're right, yes or no and wedding card have to be the main inspiration for the painting, now it finally makes sense why the hair colour is so specific. seems like i've been so focused on finding accurate matches for all the paintings and artists that i couldn't see the forest for the trees!

as for art related details, i think it's very interesting that the first three specific paintings we see copies of at the mclean mansion (so copies that hennessy and the girls did) are madame x and the daughters of edward darley boit by john singer sargent and the sisters by abbott thayer. madame x is narratively super important and compared to both hennessy and jordan over the course of the series - the daughters is also a significant sweetmetal and especially important to jordan, who notably also says her first idea of an original was a painting of the girls in similarly odd poses - the sisters is never mentioned again but still interesting since it portrays two incredibly similar-looking sisters. what i'm saying is, those three paintings show us three different aspects of the hennessys - the big personality who is the center of attention at every party but has many secrets, the group of girls who seem to be in disarray, who seem like they were just accidentally dropped in the same space, and the sisters who are eerily similar yet clearly different - i've yet to fit the fourth painting that's mentioned in the same paragraph, to the unknown british soldier in france, into all this, but yeah. i've got many more tdt art thoughts, but i've already rambled enough!

#thank you so much for your ask and for looking into this!! #there's honestly so much interesting stuff to the art in tdt i've only varely scratched the surface! #tdt #the dreamer trilogy #asks #noah's stuff