#it's not like the kids don't go to cabeswater in that one!!

[mediumgayitalian]

fic rec friday 19

hi!! welcome to fic rec friday. every week, i pick five fics i have bookmarked and rec them with a little review. check them out!

Falling For You (Literally) by peanutbutterapple

Will Solace was positively sure of two things. 1. He was unwaveringly devoted to his boyfriend of nearly a year, Nico di Angelo. 2. Of all the demigods at Camp Half-Blood, the Aphrodite kids were not to be toyed with.

love how theyre still working on their relationship in this one!! like they are clearly into each other and they know that but that is not Enough to sustain a relationship. cool commentary that relationships take work AND the work doesnt have to be hard/bad, there just needs to be effort. loved that.

2. I got a boy back home who's unlike any other by sunburst_city

“Ew,” Will says when he pulls away, licking his lips and grimacing at what Nico assumes is a mixture of stale sweat, dirt, and other things Nico would rather not think about. “You taste nasty.” “Excuse you. You try chasing down a rogue hellhound across a fucking bayou.”

this one was so cute!! it's a small thing but i love the dynamic where nico is such an Explorer you know. because it's very uniquely solangelo in terms of pjoverse!! they don't both want the same things. will is more of a homemaker and always has been. he's not a fighter and he doesn't want to be. he holds down the fort at home, he makes sure everyone is okay, he keeps people in line. whereas nico is right in the throes of the battle, in the middle of everything. they went on an adventure together and it was really hard for both of them. i like reading stuff where they have their own thing and they're very proud of each other for it.

3. fall asleep until it's only you and me by by sunburst_city

There is something frighteningly tangible about all her dreams involving Percy Jackson. 6 instances Annabeth dreams of Percy.

WHAT IF ANNABETH HAD GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO HER HUH. WHAT THEN. WHAT FUCKIN THEN. WHAT IF SHE HAD A GODDAMN MOMENT OF PEACE IN HER LIFE ACTUALLY

4. Overhead by cabeswaters

Will and Cecil really need a new phone and Nico is weak for boys with freckles. (Or, Will overhears a conversation he wasn't meant to and for once it's not a bad thing.)

overheard is the best trope of all time idc. truly elite. there is nothing more romantic than discovering your beloved talks and talks and talks about how much they love you to others!! it is flattening!!

5. Watch Me While I walk Away by @buoyantsaturn

“Actually, I’m taking over the route - Connor, nice to meet you,” the driver said, before going through the usual sign here, first name, last initial spiel. “Thank you very much, and I’ll see you around!” 

oh being that whipped is EMBBARRASSINGG truly i get him. mitchell u are so real. and will is correct it is just like legally blonde how LUCKY

thank you for joining me this friday!! happy reading!!

[dnovep]

noah is gay!!!! tell us all about it :3!!

tysm for asking, let's talk about it!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ bearing in mind i just woke up & my memory of anything not right in front of me ('the dream thieves' is in my hands rn) is nyot good sooo sorry for any glaring errors 😬

OK SO

wait i'm going to grab the first book send me luck i don't get dizzy getting out of bed too quick hahah

ok i got all 3 other books from the series we're in business baby

1. barrington whelk, family, & his alive days:

resentful, entitled, angry, lonely whelk is like that for a lot of obvious reasons but is also a mirror to noah. even after he was murdered brutally noah still loves glitter in snow globes & blue's spiky hair & playing with ronan. despite all the voices he hears whelk is alone & separate from his coworkers, noah is part of a family (even if not all of him is really there). tl;dr whelk is a reversing mirror to noah - & both are gay! comp het in an all-boys school for kids of rich & successful parents who stereotypically demand success & the perfect-seeming life (declan and the ashleys, get high grades or you're out, how much do those uniforms cost per year?). the czernys seem lovely at noah's funeral but who knows what pressures noah felt from them/school teachers/society or how much or little they acknowledged the existence of non-cishet identities. cabeswater takes adam's control over himself, his security in his own body, "I sacrifice myself." next to that, adam giving up everything, noah says "I almost woke up Cabeswater, we were close enough to do that." it's less how 'close' they were & actually how much whelk valued noah, reciprocated or not. or, this is noah talking, maybe noah thought they nearly woke up cabeswater, thought they were close enough to do that, but whelk didn't care enough for it to do that. noah makes excuses for whelk killing him (with crushing parallels to things people say in real life for people they love who hurt them). i'm including this whole paragraph because there's more here: ""You don't understand," Noah whispered. Blue was afraid he would disappear. This, she understood, had been a secret, carried inside him for seven years [since he died], and he still didn't want to confess it. "He was upset. He'd lost everything. If he'd been thinking straight, I don't he would've... he didn't mean to... we were friends like - are you afraid of Gansey?"" in the 7 years after he killed noah whelk didn't let himself miss him until it looks like he's going to die (neeve, ritual) at which point the guilt & all the good things about noah hits him & he feels "this terrible weight". of course all of this could be platonic but yeah it's just fun in a really heartbreaking & tragic way to think that they had Something almost romantic. "It was a strange, old expression, one that Whelk hadn't heard since his own days at Aglionby, when he, too, had been tight as ticks with his room-mate Czerny. [and they were room-mates!] He felt a hollowness inside him, like he was hungry, like he should've stayed home and drunk more to commemorate this miserable day." "Only Whelk and Czerny, treasure hunters and troublemakers, cared about [St Mark's Day's] existence." "Czerny and Whelk had returned, a half-dozen times, taking readings (next to the circle, there were six different numbers in Czerny's handwriting), digging in the dirt for possible artefacts, watching overnight for signs of supernatural activity." "All Whelk could find out was that the line loved reciprocity and sacrifice, but that was frustratingly vague." before whelk's family lost all their money him & noah kept pushing the ritual to wake the ley line back, there wasn't a desperate need (& maybe they liked staying there together overnight, taking readings, chatting). whelk's second girlfriend was "technically" noah's girlfriend.

2. adam vs whelk:

adam kills whelk. "[To Noah] Adam said, rather more ferocious than he'd been a moment before, "A friend wouldn't kill you."" whelk's ambition & the value he put on his family's good standing & his obsession after his dad's arrested and his family loses their money vs adam's ambition & the value he puts on improving his own good standing & his obsessive drive to push himself forward and up. "Adam had several things he thought about saying, but when he opened his mouth, it was none of those things. "Why Noah?" he asked. "Why not someone horrible?" Whelk closed his eyes for a bare second. "I'm not having this conversation. Why are you here?"" whelk hears 'voices' from his deal with cabeswater, adam sees 'ghosts' from his deal with cabeswater.

[when noah slips from time does that mean whelk does too?? or does he come back to life, if he never killed noah?? or does everything stay the same & they just fill in gaps where noah was to make it make sense???]

3. ronan & noah & The Secret.

"Noah said to Ronan, "I know why you're mad." Ronan sneered at him, but his pulse heaved. "Tell me then, Prophet." Noah said, "It's not my job to tell other people's secrets."" (this quote is so interesting - whose secret is it?? does he mean he can't tell ronan his own secret? or future!ronan's secret? someone else's??) [i could add more here about ronan & noah & cabeswater & cars, noah's red mustang, & both being gay but it's been nearly 90 mins & i'm getting sleepy again]

4. noah dies so gansey lives,

noah & whelk die vs adam & ronan live, whelk kills noah, adam saves ronan (& vice versa).

5. the blue kiss:

noah died when he was 17 - still learning about himself, still ("technically") dating a girl, so it makes sense that his ghost is still stuck in that mindset. maybe it's too early for him to realise he liked girls as friends, not romantically, maybe it's denial, maybe he never gets to work that out about himself. comp het, pressures of being in a rich family sent to a fancy & demanding school. offers to kiss blue if she's "curious" about how it feels, rubs the mark on his cheek from where whelk killed him before he does. the first kiss is a mess, the second is "a lot like kissing a dishwasher". "Blue squinted. "Are you sure you've done this before?" "Hey!" he protested. "It's weird for me, cause it's you." "Well, it's weird for me because it's you.""We can stop." "Maybe we should." then he refers to how kisses look in movies & says to imagine & copy those movie kisses - ok comp het, ok playing the part. after the 3rd kiss, "His smudge had got very dark, and he was cold enough that she shivered. Blue gave him a watery smile. "That was super nice." He shrugged, eyes doleful, shoulders curled in on themselves. He was fading. It wasn't that she could see through him. It was that it was hard to remember what he looked like, even while she was looking at him. When he turned his head, she saw him swallow. He mumbled, "I'd ask you out, if I was alive." Nothing was fair."

i listened to my noah playlist while writing this so shameless plug:

(i don't think maggie wrote him as gay, this is just fun playing about a character i love hahah)

[someonelookingpraediti]

OwlCrate Unboxing

The Raven Boys Limited Edition

The last limited edition box OwlCrate released was "The Scorpio Races" back in November 2021, and it was so good, I couldn't wait for their next one! And despite normally doing two or three a year, they haven't done another one until now!

This one celebrates the 10th anniversary of "The Raven Boys" by Maggie Stiefvater. I love, love, love this series, so I ordered this box quite literally the second it was available! It was more expensive than the normal boxes, but it was super full, and definitely worth it.

The book, as expected, is "The Raven Boys". The redesigned cover really doesn't fit with the tone of the book, in my opinion. It looks kind of kid-gothic, which the book just... isn't. But it's just gorgeous, so I'm going to forgive the incongruity. I really can't wait to have the whole set, it's going to look perfect on my bookshelf! The interior art on the dust jacket features portraits of the boys, drawn by the author - but they are nowhere near the way I pictured them. In fact, I'm not even sure which boy is which! It's got foiling on the hardcase, which is very average. But the artwork endpapers are absolutely spectacular. The front one shows Blue's bedroom at Fox Way, and the back features Gansey's "bedroom" at Monmouth.

The first (of eight!!!) items is a 300 Fox Way keyring. It's very fancy for a keyring, and it went straight on to my house keys! The main keyring has a little spinning charm in the middle, with a crystal ball on one side, and the ley line symbol on the other, and there are two other charms attached - the Page of Cups tarot card, and a silver mirror.

The next item is a wood wick candle. The label says "Lynch & Sons". It smells absolutely incredible, it's addictive! At first I was a little bemused, because I thought it didn't smell anything like Ronan should, despite it (or maybe because of it) being very nice. But actually, it smells exactly the way I imagine Niall would smell! A+ scent construction!

Next is an OwlCrate classic - loose leaf tea. This is based on the blends Maura sells from Fox Way. I'm gutted, because it's got mint in, which I'm allergic to, but the tin is super cute, and it smells so, so good! I'm reluctant to even give it away, despite not being able to drink it, because the tin is so nice and it smells so yummy!

Next up is a tote bag. This is one of the items that is duplicated from the January subscription box. And I can't decide which I love more, so I'm going to have to swap between them! This one features the Aglionby Academy school crest, and what is probably the most honest yet brutal school motto ever. The bag has an interior pocket, zipper closure, and both long and short straps, so it's a quality item and so useful!

And we have a wooden bookmark. I love that OwlCrate usually do wooden, rather than card bookmarks - they feel much better value for money! This one has little bits and bobs from the series on one side - Gansey's journal, Blue's tarot card, Noah's skull - and on the other side it says "Fate is a very weighty word to throw around before breakfast", which is the perfect choice for a quote, it's so iconic. The design is somehow both very simple, and incredibly detailed, which feels very apt. (Side note: this is designed by @llstarcasterll who is one of my favourite AFTG artists, and who designed some gorgeous dust jackets I'm desperate to get my hands on)

Then we have a ceramic travel mug. This is the other item that is duplicated from the January box. The other one had a woodland theme, and my sister claimed it straight away, but this one is forest themed. Specifically Cabeswater forest! It's blue, which works for the colour scheme of the books, the box, and weirdly, even the forest. I absolutely love this item! I don't use travel mugs often, but when I do in future, it will be this one! I love the Cabeswater logo the artist has designed for the front, and I love the dreamy quality of the artwork.

Next is the item that I imagine everyone was waiting for - Gansey's journal! It's got a leather-effect cover, stamped with the ley line symbol on the front, with a cord wrap closure that ends in a little "Excelsior" charm. And it's ring-bound, so the pages are refillable, which is so, so pleasing to me! Now I don't have to be worried about using it on a daily basis, because I can just add more pages when I run out! And even better - the back cover is embossed! It says "If found, please return to: Richard Campbell Gansey III, 1136 Monmouth Manufacturing, Henrietta, Virginia", which is the cutest thing in the entire world, although might be a bit unfortunate if you ever actually lost it!

The last item is a set of three art prints, designed to look like travel posters. Each one features a different location from the series. Normally, I absolutely hate getting art prints in a box, I'd rather choose my own art for my walls. But these are really nice, and I love that they come as a set. I also like that they feature locations, rather than characters. I'd love to frame these and add them to my wall, but unfortunately my bedroom is orange and white, and they just won't go. One day, I'll have my own place, rather than having to flat share, and on that distant day, these will go on my living room wall with the other blue and green Cabeswater prints I have!

This is such a great box, and I'm really, really hoping that when they release the other books, they also do full boxes for them - although it was super expensive, it was absolutely worth the money. I loved every single item. Although OwlCrate's book-only limited editions aren't all that, the full boxes are always phenomenal. I wish they did more of them!

They also included a "book club discussion guide" card, with a list of questions. It's not something I'd personally use, but I really appreciate it being in the box, and I think this would be a brilliant tool for book clubs and group reads.

And I'm going to use this opportunity to pimp my own product - my Gansey themed fragrance! It's super minty and comes in a Camaro-orange bottle!

I'll leave you with the back of Gansey's journal! So cute!!

[thecorvidrotation]

TRC narrative inconsistency question of the night: 

did Aurora appear even once in BLLB? and if not, WHY NOT

[gaybluesargent]

(I know I've already left you an ask and a ficlet prompt so like, no pressure if u don't get to this second ask lol) Imagine if by some Cabeswater magic the gangsey got to meet a small toddler Gansey?? Fluff points if he's younger than 10, angst points if he's 10 and freshly post-death :')

(ok this turned into Way More than ‘the gang meets kid!gansey’ oops. so! have a “here’s how i thought gansey’s death & resurrection was going to be in trk” ficlet! sad, deathy, gory content under the readmore, but with a hopeful ending.)

it’s a routine trip to cabeswater, or as routine as any trip to cabeswater is, and the gang’s all here.

well, not all here. gansey’s not here. because gansey died. 

and noah’s not here either, but none of them could blame him. if they could disappear or skip ahead to a better part, they certainly would too.

they’ve been back to cabeswater a few times since gansey died by blue’s kiss, and they don’t really know what they’re looking for. something. anything. gansey. a miracle. because if miracles happened anywhere, cabeswater seemed like the place.

but it’s quiet without him. like the magic is mourning, too. 

they walk for a while, waiting. waiting for— for— they don’t know. but whatever it is, it’s not here. there’s nothing but trees and changing seasons, time and space left vacant by loss. 

the air is hotter around ronan, anger swelling with every pained heartbeat. 

the grass wilts under adam’s steps, sorrow and frustration leeching life out of the place he worked so hard to serve. 

sound moves slower around henry, the acoustics of being underwater, shell-shocked confusion that wont fade. 

and then there’s blue, light bending away from her as she walks under canopies of leaves. 

whatever part of her usually reflected and amplified, she now kept close to her chest. she’d seen what her magic could do, and with so much grief inside of her and her friends and this place… she imagined a cord being yanked from a wall, and scissors snipping a line of thread, and a wound being sewn shut. closed and cut-off. it was safer that way.

they didn’t speak, but they didn’t have to. every one of them was wondering the same thing: 

what’s the point of magic, if not this? if not second-chances and survival and saving?

cabeswater knew why gansey had died: to save it from the demon. to save everything from the demon. 

and it knew, now, that they wanted their king back.

time was cabeswater’s tool, a craft in its hands, clay and moldable. as was will. as was life. 

and cabeswater was always a good listener.

ronan shouldered through dead winter branches and broke into a sweltering spring. setting sun slanted through the trees as they entered a clearing, if it could be called that—with four of them, the space was crowded.

immediately, blue’s skin prickled with goosebumps, a sweet sickness filling her stomach. “stop,” she said, only barely, because there was a boy sleeping at the base of a tree a few feet away.

they stilled, stopped, followed her gaze to the sleeping boy, finely-clothed and slight.

and then time stilled, stopped, as they realized the boy was not sleeping but dead. 

he lay in a pile of browned leaves, curled away from them and away from the sky like an assault had come from above. the angle of his body was wrong, tight but motionless, a subject painted into place on a dynamic environment, leaves still rustling and shadows still shifting around him. 

adam was the first to step toward him, but ronan got to him first. the look on his face confirmed what blue couldn’t bear to know. 

adam stooped and picked up a handful of leaves. under closer inspection, they were only leaves because of the shadows— in actuality, they were hornets, as dead as the boy they killed.

henry stooped and picked up a pair of tiny wireframe glasses. the lens was missing from the left eye. 

it was silent as the horror hit all of them one by one, and with barely a breath, henry asked the forest, “why?”

and then the wind blew, forcing them all to shield their eyes against the sting, scattering the dead hornets from adam’s palm. 

and when they looked up, there was someone else. someone their age, wearing a dirty aglionby uniform. 

for a moment, he was unrecognizable, because they knew him only as a ghost and he wasn’t that yet — not something dead, but something that should’ve been, his face misshapen and pouring blood, his teeth askew through his hollow cheek.

noah appraised each of them sadly for a moment, looking apologetic. but then he sat down on the ground next to gansey, resting a hand against gansey’s shoulder.

all of them heard it at the same time, echoing inside their head, rattling into their bones. you will live because of glendower. someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not.

everything fell silent again, and then noah was gone. 

and then gansey was waking up.

and breathing, crying, sobbing. 

and so was blue, before she could stop herself. 

henry put the glasses back on the ground next to gansey. he grabbed for them, and even as he palmed them back onto his face with quaking, clumsy hands, he didn’t seem to see them. 

adam couldn’t take his eyes off gansey, watching him sit up and shake the dead hornets out of his sleeves, watching as his panic crystalized into something horribly calm and vacant. adam lost the ground under his feet, so he leaned his back against a tree to stay standing. 

ronan came to life all at once, anger invigorated into fury and rage. words poured from his mouth, curses and latin and a language that didn’t exist. 

they didn’t have to understand it to know what he was saying, though. asking, really. begging. 

why?

the trees didn’t answer. not as young gansey stood to his feet and then sank back to the ground, curled into himself, shaking, looking much younger than the age of 10. not as he eventually tried again, getting back to his feet and only barely remembering to wipe the tears from his cheeks before he started walking back through the trees. 

they didn’t follow him, because cabeswater wouldn’t let them or because they couldn’t bear to. 

they just stayed, watching as the wind spread the dead hornets across the soil like seeds, watching as night fell faster than could’ve been possible. 

waiting. for something. anything. gansey. a miracle. because cabeswater was showing them this for a reason. 

it was summer. fall. winter. and then the trees fell and blood washed around their ankles in a flood, and they had no choice but to run — run upstream, to where the river flowed with blue petals, to where the blood washed up on a roadside.

to where gansey lay in the grass, dead again. 

dead again. blue swallowed a scream. why? had she not seen it enough in her dreams? was there something they’d missed, somehow?

but the scene was different, slightly. adam was the first to point it out. “we’re not here,” he said, and he was right. gansey had no court around him — he lay all alone.

and on his chest lay a book. as they crossed the street and stepped to his side, they saw it was his journal, opened to an empty page. 

blue knew every page of his journal, and she knew that none were empty. biting back tears, she slid the book out from under his cold hand. 

there was a pencil placed behind the cover. blinking hard, she flipped to it. 

every page was blank, until the first one.

on the inside of the cover was “you will live because of glendower,” written in noah’s handwriting.

and on the first page, in gansey’s handwriting, were the words: “how to wake a king.” 

the beginning of a list, followed by a bullet point on an empty line. 

blue showed the others, her pulse picking up under her skin.

they all read it, passed it. it ended in adam’s hands. 

he read it and then read it again. “cabeswater,” he said, and his voice was different — quiet but powerful, grief like an arrow quivered in his throat and finally let loose. “how?”

not why. how. 

and around them, the trees exploded with sound.

they looked to ronan, the air electric as the trees spoke into them with words they didn’t know. 

ronan didn’t hesitate before snatching the journal from adam’s hands and beginning to scribble down translations. 

his hand moved wildly, trying to keep up with the instructions they were given. but as he wrote, a grin dawned on his face, like the sun on the horizon after the longest night.

over the noise of the trees and her heartbeat, blue shouted, “can we?”

ronan looked up for just a moment, his eyes blazing with hope, and then he nodded. 

at their feet, gansey’s corpse was gone. all that was left was his voice, cutting through the voice of cabeswater, clear and real and calling:

“find me.”

[corpseroadking]

OKAY so i've worked out??? most of the main details but i think there are still some kinks for me to figure out :p

additional details below

for one, i think trc works SO WELL for homestuck thematically. the emphasis on cycles and time would fit in so well with homestuck's predestination-type bullshit.

the main session would be gansey, blue, ronan, and adam. gansey would be the first to enter the medium, with blue acting as the server player, then he would be the server player for ronan, then ronan for adam, and then blue would enter last with adam's assistance.

blue still has the same kissing prophecy, but what ultimately calls her to play the game with the rest of them is finding copies of sburb with a letter telling her to find them and play the game. she would have extreme hesitations about playing it, but the rest of fox way already know she's going to play it. she meets with them at nino's and tells them about the game.

gansey is still searching for glendower but he has the sense that this game is a lead (uhhh don't ask me why). adam would be skeptical about playing the game but when finding out what happens when you win the game (creating a universe of your own and becoming the gods of it), he's INCREDIBLY set on playing. ronan would already know that they were going to play this game in the first place because he has been awake on prospit since the beginning.

both gansey and ronan are prospit dreamers. ronan has been dreaming on prospit ever since he was a little kid. so the reason why ronan would end up becoming friends with gansey is BECAUSE he'd have already known that he was supposed to play sburb with gansey. he would essentially do what jade did with john and just sit around near gansey's sleeping dream self. and cue like. gayass yearning, looking at this sleeping pretty boy you're predestined to play a video game with.

more abt ronan: niall lynch was a product of the game and was essentially a glitch. he's supposed to just be an NPC of prospit but had the ability to just alchemize and create any object without an alchemiter. in the session prior to the gangsey's, he was killed by greenmantle. before he was killed, he cloned himself, created ronan and sent him to the new universe (where he would then grow up and play the game). ronan keeps niall's powers

i think greenmantle fits as a doc scratch equivalent-- he would have the same kind of omniscient powers as doc scratch and he'd sabotage aspects of the gangsey's session, specifically adam. greenmantle TRIES to manipulate blue (mostly bc doc scratch typically preyed on the girls of hs) but blue blocks him immediately. he waits till the game to contact adam.

because of how badly adam wants to win this game, he's so much more desperate to find shortcuts and become more powerful. also, adam is a seer of time (i'll make a whole post explaining everyone's classpects later). as a side effect of his classpect, he sees a vision of an alternate timeline where he kills gansey. he wants to stop this from happening and greenmantle gives him hope that this won't be the case. greenmantle is who convinces him to listen to the horrorterrors (cabeswater equivalent) and sacrifice himself for greater power. i think he'd go grimdark and go on a suicide mission to create the green sun (as per greenmantle's advice). in doing so, he god tiers and also absorbs some of the green sun's powers. he gains partial Guardian abilities that just intensifies his seer of time powers.

when greenmantle dies bc of the creation of the greensun, the third sleeper awakens.

staring, unblinking at a wall while thinking abt my trc homestuck au