excelsiorss

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sometimes i randomly remember how insane maggie stiefvater was for making ronan lynch—a man that can create reality—a man of god, when he himself is a god of a man. then to take this man and have him be not only in love with, but a literal soulmate of a man named adam. parrish. adam parrish. who, mind you, lives above ronan's very own place of worship. and is the namesake of the first of mankind that the bible says god made from the literal dust of the ground (adam parrish: comes from nothing, hair "dusty" in color) and appoints him to care for the garden of eden (adam parrish: sacrifices himself to ronan's sentient forest). then has adam viewing ronan as a god and ronan saying "maybe he dreamt (created)" adam???? like who just fucking writes that and goes about their life?

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me on august 5th 2025 and/or when I see Noah Czerny’s perfect, full, decaying face for the first time

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best part of td3 is declan’s story. hands down. him lying to himself for years as a form of self preservation is so so so heart wrenching. i’m going to be thinking about that for the rest of my life

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reading the raven cycle as a teenager then reading the dreamer trilogy as an adult is the ultimate form of whiplash yeah gansey you're right being a teenager really sucked

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i’m about 30 chapters into Greywaren and you’re telling me that “With each of them it had felt right” Gansey and “I’m in love with all my friends” Blue are just? not around??? like planes are falling out of the sky because dreams are falling asleep and they’re on their road-trip or whatever the fuck they’re doing like “seems normal!”

i’m totally okay with them not being in tdt because it’s not their story, but i can’t imagine them not being worried about Ronan or them not at least calling ADAM to be like “we just saw the craziest thing on the news”

the only thing i can think is that they themselves were dreams and nobody’s thought to check in on them—that’s how crazy it is to me that there’s no mention of them.

edit, literally 5 minutes later:

i had to sit and think about why a writer would do this, and I realized that the tdt series wouldn’t have worked if gansey had been around bc he would have set ronan straight in the first half of cdth, probably right after getting a call from Adam about the dorm room situation

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Re-reading the raven boys and noticing how much the information we get explicitely from gansey is directly condtradicted by exposition of Adam's interactions with ronan. Gansey goes on and on about how Adam is so careful by bringing a rag to protect his pants from oil, but then we learn about the moving dolly and him and ronan being covered in scabs, which sounds like a totally different person than the serious careful person gansey is describing.

And Adam’s own narrative emphasizes that he is forced to deal with Ganseys friend Ronan, and doesn’t imply at all that he and Ronan have a rich relationship outside of their friendship with Gansey.

So much of what Adam wants to be and how he presents himself isn’t the whole story. He’s a liar even to himself, but Ronan sees all of him.

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i absolutely adore the friendship between ronan and noah. fucking around at the dollar store, showing each other the weird stuff they find? going to church together? noah being there for ronan when he has nightmares? knowing his secrets, and keeping them? ronan throwing him out of a window? lending him his energy so he can materialize again???? besties behavior

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Gansey having the most mundane conversation about the ecological effects and economics of local produce while having an internal meltdown over Ronan wrecking the pig immediately after receiving a dick pick from Ronan has to be the best scene in the dream thieves.

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Hoping on here to say I finished my reread of trk like…months ago? and any meaningful discussion i could write has been lost. so instead here’s some notes i wrote in the margins!

“Blue saying she wouldn’t have been friends with Noah when he was alive?? Bitch I would! This kid is rad”

“I will eat her” — about Gwenllian being mean to Noah

Lots of sad faces anytime Noah does anything

“Go look in a mirror, Ronan”

Lots of “oop” about pretty much anything revolving Blue/Gansey

“Aww, he’s a dad.” — about Ronan (though he’s more malewife tbh)

“Ronan Lynch is a LIAR”

Lots of notes on PTSD and how Gansey obviously has it

“If Whelk wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him”

“Letting Calla touch a ghost that’s been moving through time for 7 years seems like a very bad idea.”

“We get it! Gansey is the cutest boy that ever lived and has a huge heart! Whatever!”

“You can’t tell me that Gansey isn’t a little bi!”

“Here we go!” — about 6:21

“Just be poly”

“Fiat lux?? Amabo te??” Ronan’s latin is terrible

“Get him Adam!” Ronan’s latin is terrible pt. 2

Lots of notes about how Orphan Girl/Opal is a mirror of Adam and how Adam loves her and protects her bc he sees himself in her and how Ronan loves them both so much.

“Oh, Noah.” “My angel!” “bby :(“ “Noooo” (I’m a Noah stan through and through)

“Yo fuck this demon!”

“Sooo interesting that Piper kills Greenmantle with wasps right after Gansey puts himself in front of possessed Noah to protect Blue.”

“I love her. My toxic wife” — about Piper

“She was feeling a special sort of extravert. What? A narcissist?”

“Gansey, love, don’t start with ‘She’ll keep the eye.’”

“Stop flirting” — about Henry and Gansey

“Wooow. A korean criminal and we just learned Henry was kidnapped as a child bc of his mother?? No way that’s related at all!”

“Gasp” — Henry / Seondeok reveal

“Stop flirting” — about Ronan and Adam

“Seeee? Declan can be funny!”

“Adam saying ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ and it’s just Ronan having to talk to Declan.”

“So Niall did the magical equivalent of a parent using their child’s social security to get a credit card.”

“About time” — about Blue realizing she’s a hypocrite

Lots of screaming about the kiss

Notes on racism and how Henry is Korean, not Chinese.

Lots of confusion bc I thought we (and the characters) already knew Ronan had dreamt Cabeswater, but everyone is acting like they didn’t know. But then Gansey mentions that HE also thought he already knew that? So more confusion.

A note about how Gansey tells Adam not to break Ronan and then a note about how off the rails Ronan goes in TDT bc Adam doesn’t text him back immediately.

“His native language is thought. That’s so powerful. Henry, I wish we got more of you.”

“Mr. Gray, put the gun away, he’s just a kid!”

“Laumonier rubs me the wrong way and I don’t know why. Like, yeah they’re criminals, and they’re Piper’s dad/uncles so there’s already something wrong with them, but there’s something super weird about them that goes beyond that. Weird vibes. Super weird vibes.”

A break down of “unguibus et rostro” and everything Adam could have meant by that.

“Yo FUCK this demon”

“Not Henry and Blue being immediately accepted by Gansey’s parents. You’re telling me they’re not poly????”

“Everyone knows and everyone knows that they know and nobody is saying it.” — about Gansey

I’ve studied both Korean and Latin (among other languages) and every time an author plays with linguistics or uses foreign words to describe something the characters or going through, I get so giddy. The section on 정 or jeong, and how easily Henry explains it to Gansey is probably one of my favorite parts. I have a whole break down over it in the margins followed by “just date already!!”

“Noah reliving his death over and over is just like Gansey having PTSD.” (I probably could do a lengthy post on this, but I will refrain)

“No!! (yes!!)” — about the sweater

“Yes! It was!!” — about the story being about Noah. (It’s not really, but it also really really is)

“I could write essays upon essays about you Noah. You are my tragic little boy, and I love you.”

There’s more, but I’m bored and have things to do. I already started on rereading TDT, so maybe I’ll do more posts on that series at some point.

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wtf was declan doing bringing ashley to monmouth at the start of trb… he told her oh yeah let me show you the place my psycho brother lives (don’t worry he won’t be there) i gotta take you to the freak museum! this is his weird ass fuck buddy and their poor sidekick hahaha date night! you’re a lobster

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I know everyone says that bllb is Adam’s book, but I kind of disagree. It honestly feels like Blue’s. She has more chapters, she’s constantly going through it, and she’s finally developing—as a character, in her relationships with the other characters, how she views those relationships, and in her own magical abilities. She’s also having her place in the world repeatedly shoved into her face and coming to the (false) realization that her dreams are not possible. Sure, magic is real and she is in love with her friends, but she’s getting to the point where simply being determined can no long keep her from the truth of her situation. She’s breaking down. She literally has a moment, just after Persephone’s death, where she is realizes that she is no longer the same person that she was. Her life is now divided between the “Blue before,” and the “Blue after.” Whereas Adam is, for the most part, stagnant. He’s had his break down moment(s), he’s hit his rock bottom. That’s not to say he isn’t still developing because he is. He’s just developing at a much slower pace now. He’s accepted Cabeswater and he’s processing that and his trauma (kind of), and he’s slowly changing how he interacts with the world and the rest of the characters. But those changes are not on the level of Blue. If I really wanted to get into it, I would argue that every book is his book. Adam has the best character development because every book sees him change in some way: the most change being in the first two books, and the smaller, more refined, development is in the later books.

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If the Gray Man is a combination of all the good qualities Gansey, Ronan, and Adam have, then Greenmantle is all the bad.

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I haven’t updated since starting bllb so here’s just a few things I love / have noted in the first few chapters:

1. Ronan saving Blue from falling into the pit in the cave after they’ve been bickering all day, and Blue, in the same moment, realizing that she’s been a bit of a bitch to Ronan. They really are the same person.

2. Gansey’s blatant PTSD. We love trauma.

3. Adam trying to distant himself from the group (kinda?) so that they stop fighting, and Gansey being oblivious. Adam: “I’m so glad we’re not fighting.” Gansey, suspicious but too dumb to know why: “Yeah, me too.”

4. Noah. Just Noah. Him existing outside of time and knowing that his end is coming and not being able to tell anyone or stop it is so tragic. I could write essays about this but I won’t. I love him a lot though.

5. Malory and Dog.

6. Gansey thinking he’s not allowed to want Blue because Adam’s been hurt enough.

7. The carpet in Borden house.

8. Ronan being a poser. (I won’t hear any arguments about this. He’s a huge poser. Stylishly ripped jeans and all.)

9. Greenmantle calling out Ronan’s shitty latin.

10. Greenmantle treating the boys like the little shits they are.

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it’s taking me forever to reread the series but i started bllb yesterday so. let’s get it.

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Ronan being lowkey terrified of the the Gray Man and still attacking him when he found out about Niall is such a good demonstration of Ronan’s character. He literally says a page before that he knows that if things went south and the Gray Man decided to attack them (them being Maura, Calla, Blue, Gansey, and Ronan) that he would win, even without a gun, and he still decides to punch the man. I love it. The whole scene is fantastic.

edit: also Gansey just being like “this is totally justified.” makes me laugh every time.

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I unapologetically love Kavinsky as a character and as a “villain.” I love that his character is this teenage boy who is traumatized because his father may or may not have tried to kill him and that he uses drugs and dreaming and being an asshole to everyone as a way to cope with his abandonment issues. I love that he was the foil to Ronan. I love that he was built up as someone with a possibility for redemption only for that redemption arc to go hurtling straight into hell. Do I wish that he had actually grown into a better person and been expanded upon more? Yes. But do I also love that it didn’t happen? Yes. Kavinsky didn’t want to live in the real world. He didn’t want to believe in anything that he didn’t make himself because he could only trust himself. I don’t necessarily think he’s a villain in the strictest sense of the word, but he’s a great antagonist. He wanted to drag Ronan down with him, wanted to make Ronan see the world as he saw it, and I think he needed to die for Ronan to truly realize what that path could lead him to.

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I’m rereading The Dream Thieves and god I forgot how much shit just happens. Like chapters 23-30 are just about ONE DAY. In one day: the crew visits the lake, the Grey Man breaks into Monmouth and kills two people, the Grey Man stages a crime scene, Blue meets the Grey Man, the Grey Man takes Maura on a date, Gansey and Ronan go to Kavinsky’s substance party, the Grey Man’s bed and breakfast is broken into, and Ronan dreams about Adam turning into Kavinsky. It’s so much that you forget it’s all happens on the dame day until the characters themselves point it out.