#god i love gansey

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a collection of gansey coded characters <3 !

stede bonnet — our flag means death / chidi anagonye — the good place / neil perry — dead poets society / milo thatch — atlantis: the lost empire / leslie knope — parks and rec / ted lasso — ted lasso / alan zaveri — russian doll / reynie muldoon — the mysterious benedict society / meg march — little women / orpheus — hadestown / arthur — arthur / randal pearson — this is us / christopher robin — winnie the pooh / amy santiago — brooklyn 99 / pablo — the backyardigans

[tigtree]

i think too often about adam parrish becoming gansey at harvard. wearing gansey's old clothes, using gansey's old words, picking up the outcasts and the freaks and giving them somewhere to belong.

that quote about "i think ultimately you become the person you needed the most" but it's adam parrish and the crying club

[cabeswaterdrowned]

Adam and Blue’s narration on Gansey’s thumb on lower lip nervous habit

[funkyboxofinterests]

I think my DNA was altered by this book. 11/10 would recommend.

[littlefoldedpaperstars]

doing a reread of the raven cycle and even though i can't even remember how many times i've read this series I still have to stop every few sentences to just clutch my chest and go AUGHHHHH because it's so brilliant idk maggie stiefvater will always have my heart in her fist

[crimeronan]

i was explaining ronanessy to tera yesterday (who has not read trc OR tdt) and i've woken up still thinking this is hilarious:

sorry for thinking it's delightful that everyone becomes the worst possible version of themselves as soon as gansey blue and noah are gone. as if it's my fault.

[lmaster37]

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 a 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."

"I feel you're being condescending," Blue said.

richard "dick" campbell gansey the third, the boy you are. i need to shake him. i need to put him into a small enclosure for three to four business weeks. i need to force him through a Feminism 101 (How To Stop Being A Polite Misogynist) class.

all of the characters in trc are deliciously horrible but there's something about gansey specifically that fascinates and enthralls. like he is genuinely kind and his family are genuinely kind and also they're in the top 500 richest families in the world and it shows. they're all nice. they're all horrible. you could have dinner with them and they would ask about your interests and genuinely care and then you would go home and feel like the scum of the earth and they wouldn't even realise

(i think it's so interesting how gansey, even when he's in the wrong and HE KNOWS HE'S IN THE WRONG, apologises Like This. like, yeah, he fucked up, but blue's being a bit impolite about it, isn't she? it's not that he isn't open to criticism, but it's not exactly Proper Feedback Protocol to be so blunt about it, now is it.)

[wander-wren]

i’ve talked about this before but does anyone else ever think about the little hints of who ronan was before niall’s death—friendlier, gentler, better-behaved—and how, from his perspective, everyone who knew him is disappointed with the ronan they have now. they want the old him back. they would never say it in those words, but they do. even gansey, in a way.

i can’t even….articulate it better than that. there’s a whole essay here, probably. it just breaks my heart

[paradisetemporarilymisplaced]

so I’m rereading the raven cycle

[shrimpscrawling]

I always forget that Ronan was so chilly with Blue in the beginning. I know they don’t interact a whole lot in the books generally, but he was so pissed about her tagging along in that helicopter

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a collection of adam coded characters <3

[todd anderson, dead poets society / aaron burr, hamilton / wilhelm, young royals / stevie budd, schitts creek / carmy, the bear / blanca, pose / tori spring, solitaire / eurydice, hadestown / robin buckley, stranger things / nina rosario, in the heights / michael scofield, prison break / marianne sheridan, normal people / elliot alderson, mr. robot / maeve wiley, sex education / coach beard, ted lasso]

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An analysis on gender and sexuality - Blue Sargent

Hi! This belongs to my big Raven Cycle analysis, click here for the masterpost!

This part will deal with our favorite short ant, Blue Sargent. A sort of silly but still intentional analysis/essay on why I think she's nonbinary, where I go off on random tangents because i have adhd and access to the internet. Enjoy! (This will be so fucking long though, I had Thoughts)

3. Trust me, the characters are queer as fuck and I can prove it (+ my professional opinion on whether they’d wear a crop top)

a) Blue Sargent

Look. No matter how I look at this entire character, there’s simply no way Blue is not genderfluid. (The fluid is one of Maura’s footy healing teas btw.) And I am here to spread the agenda and force my own identity onto fictional characters so that after you have read this analysis and interpretation, you will agree with me on my correct opinion.

To begin with, there is this entire theme of not fitting in and dressing in an “unusual” way. It becomes very evident that Blue is really proud of being weird and eccentric, this displayed in attitudes towards her mom, the boys and her internal monologue about Mountainview High. She does not want to fit in if it means changing for others, yet she says “the problem with being weird was that everyone else was normal”. This could possibly be a metaphor for being trans; being proud of it, yet being only surrounded by cis people, who conform to all those societal gender norms. It means one would feel sort of isolated (as Blue does mention she is), not being able to relate to or feel deeply understood by anyone in their environment.

Additionally, alternative fashion (or at least that’s how I would describe her aesthetic in general) has quite typically been claimed by queer people. I know this is a lot of interpretation here, and it’s worth mentioning that you absolutely cannot tell someone’s gender by how they present on the outside. However, the evidence gets stronger as we dive deeper. If we look at her fashion sense together with the statement of “I don’t care to be pretty, I care to look on the outside as I do on the inside.”, it sends quite a clear message: Her outside is very jumbled, not conforming to societal norms, a mix of many different styles that seems to change its focus daily. In my opinion, that’s pretty gender of her. If that’s how she presents on the outside (which is not traditionally “female”, among other things I just mentioned), just think about what that would mean for her inside. It’s chaotic, it’s messy, it’s just a lot of things. It’s called being genderfluid.

The second big theme we have is her constantly being treated as “one of the boys”. And yes, of course cis girls can be friends with large groups of boys (and the other way around) but it is quite rare or unusual, especially if all of them are straight (so my point is this: Blue is not cis and also the boys are all queer, more on that later). Either way, Blue defies traditional gender norms and “girly” hobbies by taking part in fun teambuilding activities such as cave exploring, trespassing, grave robbery and burying a body. We stan.

Then we have this quote, which is talking specifically about Blue truly being part of the group for the first time: “They were loud and triumphant and kings of Henrietta.” Now, while kings are a theme that is quite consistent throughout the books, each of the boys and Mr. Gray being called one at least once in significant scenes of their character arcs, by that time it is not yet that established. There would have been so many other words for Maggie Stiefvater to use. First of all, kings and queen, though that would be a bit unwieldy. She chose not to alienate Blue. But there were other alternatives, something not quite so gendered, such as royals, or gods even. Yet, that specific wording happened, showing she is in no way other than the boys. And maybe in that scene she really wasn’t, feeling more masculine that day perhaps.

Furthermore, “whatever her identity crisis was, it seemed to live at home, not with the boys”, meaning she does feel alienated around all those women, but she does somehow fit in with the boys. Yes, this is also a teen thing of being misunderstood by parents while identifying a lot with peers, but when what she rejects is femininity and she seems to embrace masculinity, it’s a bit sus, don’t you think? And then lastly it’s not only the Gangsey, but also the Vancouver crowd as well, a group of boys held together by somehow being different than the rest of Aglionby (if I remember correctly), that she feels immediately at home with.

Next, there are the 300 Fox Way women. As we just established, Blue feels a sort of identity crisis in this house filled with women. She does not fit in, because she is the only one without any psychic abilities, meaning she is already “other”, but there is a clear focus on showing how she is so, so loved, by her direct family (like Maura) but also the others (Calla, Persephone) have accepted her as one of their own. Now, what if she was also genderqueer? Wouldn’t that give her one more reason to be different, while simultaneously putting emphasis on the fact that trans people can and deserve to be loved by their families?

I saved the strongest evidence for last (well, sort of, there’s still more to come actually). The following quote is the ultimate confirmation Blue is not female. As she, the Gangsey and some of her family group together in the kitchen, she says there were “three boys, four women, and one Blue”! Here she is specifically not assigned either of the aforementioned genders, not grouped together with the 300 Fox Way women in a “five women, Blue being one of them” manner and also not one of the boys in this scene. This might be an age issue (like how for months I wasn’t sure if I dislike both the terms “woman” and “girl” being used for me because of age or gender), but the scene could have easily said “women, boys and one teenage girl”, focusing on groups divided by age and gender like the original intention might seem to be. And yet it didn’t.

Now for some more quotes. After some guy from her school draws a penis on the unicorn on her binder, she says “she preferred her unicorns ungendered”. For the reasons already listed I deduce that, much like the unicorn, Blue prefers herself ungendered.

“She felt one thousand years old. She also felt like maybe she was a condescending brat.” is of course supposed to show how contradicting growing up can feel, perception of oneself flickering between being terribly grown up and still being a little child, who cannot know anything. I would also argue, though, that this duality can be quite reminiscent of her gender identity, feeling like multiple, supposedly contrasting, things at once. As an additional afterthought, the theme of being ageless is sometimes associated with omniscient beings, detached from being human, such as deities. Another thing that would be quite typical for gods, especially when they are so apart from society, is being genderless, or having a gender that fluctuates. Some examples for this would be Dionysus, Loki or the ancient genderfluid entity Asushunamir, stemming from the mythology of one of humanity’s first civilizations, Mesopotamia.

Then, naturally, we have other people’s perception of her. While she probably has been described as a girl in quite a few instances in the book (one of them being Henry, though before he really knew her), to me it sticks out that she describes herself as a “sensible teen”, not a sensible girl, though that might have made even more sense in the context of not going around kissing random boys (but yes, let’s be honest, that’s some antiquated slut-shaming, people can kiss as many consenting people as they like). Further instance is that Gansey says “Blue was a fanciful, but sensible thing. Like a platypus, or one of those sandwiches […]”. Like, he goes out of his way to not describe her as a girl in that scene, instead drawing weird-ass comparisons. Now, while calling his friends magnificent creatures is totally his thing (maybe Gansey rejects gendered terms and embraces silly greetings), this did seem intentional to me. Not to mention the obvious parallel of platypuses being mammals but laying eggs, somehow combining different species. Despite reproducing differently than “normal” mammals (also having different sexual organs), they are still recognized as such, and if that isn’t very trans rights of them, I don’t know what is. (Yes I know being a mammal is not derived from reproductive organs and this is probably all somewhat wrong, but I am relying heavily on metaphors here and also I dropped Biology.)

Now as a last thing I chose the entire theme of “something more”. If I’m not mistaken, “something more” is important for every other character as well (I specifically remember Henry), but it begins with Blue and seems to be most relevant to her either way. As I’m writing this I realize so much of the evidence I have collected can also be read under points of view of growing up, but still fits her gender, showing not only that Blue is pretty reminiscent of how teenagers feel, how things in their lives contradict, but also that we come to realizations about our own gender as we grow up, whether it’s realizing at five, fifteen or fifty years old, self-discovery is an ongoing process. So “something more” is absolutely about her future, but it might also relate to her gender being something more than simply female, more than the binary dictates.

If you read this entire series with the opinion that Blue is not cis (like I do! And like my real life friends hopefully will after reading this J), there are masses of hints pointing towards it and creating evidence. Smash the cis-tem.

By now I’ve made my point about her gender pretty clear, so now it’s time to point out that Blue isn’t straight either. First of all, if she does not confirm to either of the binary genders, she cannot, in any way, be heterosexual, but either way, there’s just no way she’s straight.

Now, if you read this essay (? analysis? meta deep-dive?), you will soon be convinced that her entire friend group is queer somehow, which absolutely accounts for something because I can confirm, from real life experience, that queer people seem to flock towards each other. I will admit that we don’t really see her interact with many female characters outside of family (yes I will admit this is a red flag, but I promise the book passes the Bechdel test), but the vibes she gives off are clearly m-spec.

Additionally, because I am always looking for some representation of my own identity, Blue could potentially be somewhere on the aro-ace spectrum. This isn’t shown super strongly, especially since she does get a canon relationship and it’s very sweet and romantic. Yet, she is not really sex-driven or anything like that and seems to value friendship a LOT, though the entire theme of friendship in general throughout the series will be explained in a later part of this analysis. Also, while I am aware that the books are YA and thus won’t focus on sex too much either way, especially in teen characters, it’s comparably low, considering the premise is (wrongfully) about true love’s killing kiss. We can also compare her storyline and character to Kavinsky, someone her age who seems to be very obscene, and characters like Ronan, who are somewhere between them on that scale. Overall, I would probably call her pan, but once again, there might be some greysexuality or something similar in there.

Lastly, Blue would absolutely wear crop tops of course. Now that I think about it, she probably even does at some point in the books.

[wlwgang]

Guys wait I had shiver on my nook from ages ago I’m rereading… watch this space

[exbeaut]

oh god i love Renee thank u for finally slapping some sense into this dumbasses head

[dawning-day]

hi fellas part 2 of the boygenius character study is up <3 tonight's entertainment is gansey as lucy dacus because well. look at them. and then look at me. obviously i was going to do that.

[tyhxrondxle]

mirrorball (gansey’s version)