#decade trc reread

[deathsweetblossoms]

HELLO?

Not that far into Blue Lily Lily Blue and Adam is surprised that Gansey is showing up at his apartment late in the night AND THAT HE’S NOT RONAN? SO LIKE RONAN HAS BEEN HANGING THERE OFTEN ENOUGH THAT HE FEELS LIKE PART OF THE SPACE????

[squash1]

once again, not a Fan but artemus hiding in the closet and just being like yeah no thank! i don’t wanna come out right now i’m actually suuuuper comfy in here with all the tupperware and flour and stuff. there’s just been too many events this decade i think! i just really can’t do it right now! but thank you for your time anyway! is the most relatable shit

[cabeswaterdrowned]

Adam really is still guy of all time to me it turns out… sorry Andrew

[konungarike]

My initial reaction was [redacted] but then I remembered it’s been like a decade since I reread TRC and I don’t remember at all, actually. The nuances have been lost to time and any thoughts I have on the subject are likely to have been made up

[juvinadelgreko]

adding to this as a Late To The Party queer person who also just reread TRC:

i second everything in this post. it took me nearly 2 decades to realize i wasn’t into men. looking back on my life, i attribute this largely to the fact that i was way too busy being a Gifted Kid ™️ who also played elite sports and barely had time to eat, let alone consider my own identity.

those things were always true about me: i just didn’t see them for what they were until i actually had time for myself, got out into the world and had experiences that showed me those things.

i was into women the entire time. but until i actually met another queer woman, it never occurred to me that there was any explanation for what i felt beyond “this girl is my friend. that’s why i like her so much.”

i was never into men. but until i actually tried to kiss one and hated it it never occurred to me that there might’ve been an explanation for my lack of interest in them besides “i’m very busy playing elite junior sports and carrying a full ap course load.”

so it doesn’t at all surprise me that in the midst of working 3 jobs, dealing with abusive father, striking a bargain with a magical sentient forest, hunting for a dead welsh king, AND going to school, adam parrish didn’t exactly have a minute to consider that maybe he liked ronan’s attention for other reasons.

adam tells us straight up that he enjoys ronan’s crush because it makes him feel worthy of admiration—and he’d never felt admired that way before. that’s a far more plausible explanation than “i am also queer.” and while it probably does account for some of his feelings, adam Does Not Have The Time to look at it any closer. he’s literally being possessed while he tries to finish his senior year of high school!

then ronan kisses him, and he likes it???? what?? i think many queer people have this moment, where we can pinpoint the exact moment that we realized we’d been in denial the whole time, or just hadn’t been able to see the whole truth. because before an actual kiss, there were reasonably plausible heterosexual explanations for everything we’d felt prior. it’s not until something happens for which there is no heterosexual explanation that we start to go hm. perhaps i missing something.

this happened to alex in rwrb. he could easily explain away his obsession with henry by telling himself and everyone else that he hated henry because he was snobby and british and had been annoying to him one time. why would alex look any closer at this scenario? his mother, the POTUS, is fighting for re-election against a very conservative candidate. she doesn’t need her son to be queer. then henry kisses him, he likes it, and there is no heterosexual explanation for that.

and of course, as we said, with adam. he was able to explain away enjoying ronan’s crush, had no desire to examine his feelings any further because of Life ™️, and then suddenly he’s making out with ronan and he likes it and oh wait there’s no heterosexual explanation for this!

so yeah. it makes a lot of sense. queer people under a great deal of outside pressure usually take a minute to realize they’re queer. something has to happen to trip the wires. it’s kind of sad but very true. re-reading trc, i’m actually really impressed with how maggie wrote adam and ronan’s arc. it’s very much authentic to what a lot of us experience.

there’s a very clear contrast between queer people who grew up in pressure cookers and queer people who grew up affirmed and supported like ronan did. whether he ever came out to his parents or not, ronan was always told he was loved and powerful. so facing his own queerness would’ve been a much easier pill for him to swallow than adam. i imagine he saw declan start flirting with girls, thought “girls? really? ew. no.” and that was that. ronan was gay, there was nothing that could be done to change that, so fuck you if you didn’t like it. but when niall dies and he loses his support system and he has to figure out his powers on his own, dating promptly goes to the bottom of his priority list. that is, until adam. until he has the gangsey as a support system.

TL;DR, it’s very hard to live an authentic an authentic life if all your energy is going towards survival. no shit adam parrish is unknowable. he doesn’t have time to learn.

I’ve been musing on adam’s sexuality and I know some folks feel like he’s been bi the whole time but having just done a deep pynch-focused dive through the books, I actually think adam hadn’t realized that he was into ronan Like That until they kissed. like he obviously knew ronan was into him (and actually, knew ronan was gay since like, the beginning of trb probably), but he had sort of convinced himself that the reason he enjoyed it was vanity/attention. and right before and after the kiss we get the line “adam didn’t understand anything” which feels to me like he hadn’t even comprehended this was a thing he wanted until he was doing it.

and that’s actually a very common queer experience, especially for folks who are interested in multiple genders, especially when they’re young.

so adam, despite wanting to know everything and being the perceptive one, has these increasingly big moments of “I feel like I’m missing some data here” but the data he needed was the actual experience of kissing ronan/making the conscious decision to kiss ronan again and THEN he has his eureka moment. And he can look back at the moments where he found his Latin teacher hot, or when he put a picture of an attractive man in his glove box and realize he was bi the whole time.

[comicsohwhyohwhy]

Share your self care!

I was tagged by @emmerrr, thanks so much, dear :)

🌿 Favourite comfort food

Chocolaateeeee. And cheese. Which makes me sound like a cliché given the country I live in, but who needs to be hipster when chocolate and cheese are involved

🌼 Favourite alcohol (or hot drink!)

I say, why not both? Mulled wine! (And hot chocolate. Also hot chocolate WITH booze is pretty damn nice, like Amaretto or Rum...)

🌷 Favourite relaxing activity

Taking a bath, reading a comic in the bath and feeling decadent (until I by accident drop the comic into the bath, that makes it less relaxing)

🌸 Favourite fluffy/feel-good fic

Ohh I’m bad with fic recs, also, what I consider to be fluff is probably angst by other people’s standars, ha. I did however just read this and this lovely fic and I think they both qualify :)

🌻 Favourite calming scent

Lavender! Like the fields in the south of France, makes me think of vacations too

🌺 Favourite relaxing (or uplifting) song at the minute?

My chill playlist gives me Dida’s Love Song (Gone Wrong) as the answer to this!

🌵 Favourite white noise

The waves of the sea

🍄 Favourite book to get lost in

Hm I’m not a huge rereader of things, so it’s a bit hard to answer? I reread some of TRC recently; and then in terms of comics let’s go with... Saga. Actually yeah, ongoing comics work because there’s new stuff I can get lost in regularly :P

💐 Favourite chill-out TV show

Atm watching some Brooklyn 99, very relaxing

🌹 The best advice you’ve ever had

Probably that downtime is really important for recharging your batteries, be it for creative projects or other things in life

I’m gonna tag @toast-the-unknowing @laireshi @two-of-swords-621 @motorbikeadam @bipolarronanlynchevangelist @gerdavonrinnlingen and whoever else feels like doing it, of course :)! Also I’m bad at keeping track of those things, so sorry if you were already tagged by other people

[canwriteitbetterthanueverfeltit]

I'm rereading TRC for, surprisingly, the first time, so prepare for an influx of gangsey content

Also, I'm really happy this is going to be my first read of the DECADE and after I finish then I can use my new raven's prophecy tarot deck

[deathsweetblossoms]

I’m rereading the Raven Cycle for the first time in a decade and, I’m sorry, but when Adam buys Blue the tiny sprig of baby’s breath and a single carnation (because that’s all he can afford) I simply cease breathing. Adam, my boy, you are too pure too good.

[deathsweetblossoms]

THIS SERIES IS A MULTISHIPPERS DREAM

[deathsweetblossoms]

So nobody is going to talk about how Gansey is always chewing mint, smells like mint, has mint plants and mint was historically and esoterically associated with the dead? Because of the naiad Minthe?

[deathsweetblossoms]

“At 300 Fox Way, Adam quietly turned eighteen”

Oh my god he didn’t tell anyone? 😩 nobody celebrated?? ADAMMM HELPPP WHY ARE YOU SUCH A TRAGIC CHARACTER OMIGOD

[deathsweetblossoms]

WHAT DID I F*CKING SAY?!?

Gray Man is the grown up, dangerous and nefarious version of Gansey.

The way he looks through all of Gansey’s belongings with such care and reverence. So cute!!

The way he, like me, lost his shit when the two goons stomped through the mini model of Henrietta (which btw I am GUTTED HOW DARE THEY)!!

I love him. He is hot and mysterious and dangerous. GET IT MAURA.

[deathsweetblossoms]

Rereading The Raven Cycle ten years later and why is the Gray Man making me feel ~a type of way~? Is it because I’m older now, and he’s like an intellectual, nefarious version of Gansey? His flirting with Maura sent me over the edge, he recited poetry on the spot per Calla’s request, and now he’s sitting in a stakeout passing the time by reading a translated Bede’s Death Song?? Daddy hitman 🥵

[deathsweetblossoms]

“I’m sorry no one saved you”

— Maura to the Gray Man

So, the Gray Man is what Gansey would have ended up as without the raven boys and blue. Maybe not a hit man, but definitely something desperate and empty and hungry and always searching. Gray Man finds things nobody else can find, and “the world turns out it’s pockets (for Gansey”. They’re two sides of the same coin. The clues are all there. They both even end up with a Sargent woman, lol!

Kavinsky is what Ronan would have been without Gansey, without the Raven Boys. They’re also two sides of the same coin, down to sexuality and dead fathers and dream thieving (and creating complex things *coughspoilerscough*).

I just this dynamic is so interesting and it really elevates the Raven boys and their relationship with each other. How, even though they go through their challenges and they argue, they still needed each other.

[deathsweetblossoms]

NOAH AND BLUE BLUE AND NOAH

[deathsweetblossoms]

One more thing:

When Ronan says “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” in Latin to Barrington Whelk, my soul left my body and floated through every level of the bardo before coming back and screaming into the void of my room at 3am. The way he makes dick jokes and sex jokes only with MEN in the first two books, before ~things are revealed~, I cannot. I’m ascending.