#maybe this is the year i write that pynch idea i have on my concept board 👀

[decaflondonfog]

day 6/30 of 30 microfics in 30 days

this one is yesterday’s because i got too busy and needed sleep BUT here’s some post-trc harvard era pynch ✨ (non-tdt compliant bc i love myself lol)

PYNCH • STARS for @discobee

[baladric]

i was just randomly scrolling through the tdt tag and i saw your post about the horrible treatment by supposed fans towards stiefvater and trc/tdt and i couldn’t agree more. things were always tricky and it was a sad sad day when she closed her tumblr and i remember a lot of it had to do with the treatment of kavinsky’s character. i’m not saying there weren’t problematic elements to her writing but she more often than not got criticised for all sorts of dumb shit but i truly hoped that the fandom had matured in the years following the release of the raven king but i suppose it was not to be. i remember when she did a reddit ama and got accused of being homophobic because declan and jordan got engaged but not ronan and adam. like ?!?!? did this person even pay attention to the story and their character arcs?? it would make very little sense for pynch to get engaged, not least because they are barely in the same place for most of tdt. anyway sorry for the rant but i just truly feel bad for maggie, for all the work and love she put into these characters and doing it all through a scary illness that nearly stopped her from writing and by all accounts would have killed her. i definitely think she wasn’t prepared for the level of fandom and attention she was going to receive for trc and it sucks that she’s had to reduce her presence from social media since. i can’t wait for her next books though especially because they seem to be more for adults. i think she has truly mastered young adult fiction so i’m curious to see what she does next, and it’s bound to be good if tdt is any indication

oh word, friend! honestly the vitriolic outlash re: kavinsky was sort of my personal first red flag about the rising of purity culture in fandom spaces (though there were, and are, valid criticisms of k obviously, like yikes re: the "face of a refugee" shit)—and now all this stuff about pynch in tdt is like... idk, people have lost touch with the concepts of nuance and also unhomogenized relationship arcs.

(THIS GOT SO LONG SORRY, I HAVE TOO MANY THOUGHTS)

idk how understood this is, but as a chronically ill person, i think about it a lot—ronan's entire arc in tdt, especially in cdth, is about chronic illness and the arduous, painful process of acceptance of one's disability and consequent limitations. like you said, stiefvater came into tdt after a terrifying illness during which she literally lost the ability to string sentences together, and very much had no idea if it was a skill she would ever regain. and she's still dealing with issues, i'm sure, because any serious illness leaves its marks.

being a dreamer has always had aspects of chronic illness, though one could argue that its original plot inclusions in trc aligned more with experiences of addiction and mental illness (with a soupçon of internalized homophobia, for Flavor™). but the way tdt starts off with ronan being very directly forced into conflict with his physical capabilities in regards to doing the things he needs to do for his own essential happiness (read: moving to be closer to adam, and his following inability to actually do that, as it took him too far off the ley line to be safe for him,or anyone around him) is a classic chronic illness narrative. and considering what stiefvater was coming out of, experientially, it's very clear that this is deliberate.

(i think she's actually talked about this somewhere, maybe in that reddit ama, but idr where! if anyone wants to follow-up with that, it would be lovely)

the thing is!!! navigating one's own disability is a grieving process—and grief is multifaceted, and comes paired with a lot of anger and railing at god/nature/reality/whatever. which, of course, can absolutely ruin relationships and push loved ones away. and even if it doesn't firebomb those relationships, it still complicates them intrinsically. a person can't help someone that's not helping themself, and it's hard to have space for helping yourself when all of your resources are going towards survival. and ronan is very much surviving. he is not helping himself—and he hasn't been for a long time at the start of tdt. we see that in the daily/weekly schedule declan had to force him to write so he wouldn't just waste away, and it continues apace into, you know. violent ecofascism. (which is a lot more destructive than your average joe can manage with their disability crisis, but you know, each to their own!)

meanwhile, adam's on his own self-worth/self-concept journey, spreading his wings at college and doing the very classic job of swinging oneself so far in the opposite direction of their old behaviors or the person they used to be, that it ends up being its own brand of personal disservice. he has put the adam parrish of henrietta in a box and shoved it to the back of his mind, and donned this very literal disguise (my boy! in a tweed fuckin vest and slacks! love that for him) of ivy league therapist friend!adam, and though we obvs lack adam pov to take the actual temperature of this, it's really clear that this shift isn't sustainable. you can't run from trauma, and you can't run from your past self, and he's making a valiant effort at doing both. it's gonna back up on him, if it's not already.

so ronan going off the rails? not something adam has the capacity to manage gracefully, even if ronan was letting him in—which he isn't, because he's grieving the simple fact of an inherent freedom he'll never be allowed. all of his friends have scattered on the wind like so many traumatized dandelion seeds, and he's stuck in the same place, unable to put the ghosts of their collective past behind him, because they live in his house. this is the driveway where he found his father, dead; this is the barn where he spent countless fruitless hours trying to dream a sweetmetal for his mother, only to have her die horribly before he could; this is the car in which he raced a dead boy, and these are the streets he drove with his best friend on long, sleepless nights when all they could do was try to keep each other from falling through the holes in their heads. the school he failed, the church in which he dreamed a crime worse than anything he'd dreamed before or since, the hummocks of disturbed earth, grown over with tall grass, in which he buried the things that wanted to kill him and who knows how many other corpses of his own physical self.

and he can't leave. he can never leave, so he's clutching at straws and alienating everyone who loves him and just McFreakin Losing It! which is fine, because he's nineteen and stranded and feels more alone than he ever has, in this void of anything like guidance, in the void of parental figures, in the void of any kind of traditional life path, and he has to work all of that out for himself.

so of course he and adam aren't getting fucking engaged. of course it's not a happily ever after—and it would be disinenguous for maggie goddamn stiefvater to give us that! because when has she ever been anything but a writer of complex, messy and wretchedly gorgeous characters? isn't that what drew us all to her in the first place? because fuck, y'all, the draw sure isn't her plots or her worldbuilding! (i love her worldbuilding, to be clear, it's just... aside from the dreaming, it's not super consistent)

stiefvater's appeal as an author is the very unique and complex way she understands her characters' minds, and refuses to ever play them as archetypes. gansey isn't just a nerd, or just a rich boy, or just a lonely person—he is all of them at once. he's a king of men, he's miserable, he's giddy with the thrill of being alive, he wants to get pizza with his friends and drive too fast and be allowed to go fuckin bonkers now and again and kiss the girl he loves.

gansey is a fucking problem. blue is a problem, henry is a problem—adam parrish and ronan lynch are PROBLEMS, and god fuckin bless stiefvater for not only allowing this in her characters, but for leaning into it. she lets them be messy, lets them be awful and fight and do the wrong thing, and—most importantly—she lets them find ways to come back together afterwards!

all this to say, it blows my fucking mind that people are surprised that this trilogy is doing anything other than absolutely wrecking shop. stiefvater wouldn't have written these books if there weren't things in her characters that needed to break in order to be patched back up, stronger than before. the entire raven cycle universe is built on the shifting nature of individual identity, and the ways we all have to create our own fulfillment, because the goals we set for ourselves are very rarely the point of existence that we want them to be. and if the first quartet was about gansey and adam, at their core, then this trilogy is about ronan and declan, building their fulfillment. finding their footing in the world as adults (which, you know, quick point, tdt is not young adult fiction, it's regular old speculative fiction, so uhhh yeah of course the material is gonna be even less fluffy homogenized shit than the first series) and that's fucking HARD and MESSY and just. jeez, y'all, have faith in stiefvater that it'll all come out the better, and find some peace that things are messy right now. (it's not HOMOPHOBIC for a queer person to struggle in fiction, and if you're thinking that, you need to sit down and examine that thought very deeply. i could say a lot about how declan falling in love and getting engaged is extremely meaningful for his personal development, where the same thing wouldn't be for adam and ronan, but uhhh idk)

we make a lot of jokes that stiefvater likes to hurt us, but does she? really? like, yes, her writing hurts, but as a person who was dragged kicking and screaming through his mid-20s by the nape of his neck and the slim hope of the brighter future shown in the raven cycle, i can say that her stories are actually, at their core, about healing and the awful paths we have to walk to reach it. and, with the advent of tdt, they're now also about the fact that healing is cyclical, not linear! there's no end point to growth. there's no happy ending—because there's no ending, short of death. life has ups and downs, and with every layer of ourselves we heal, another, deeper layer pulls back, demanding that same care and attention, those same tears and clawing for the light. it's hard. it sucks. but at the end of the day, we can get gelato with our friends. we can look at art. we can find our sweetmetals to carry us through our days, whether those be assistive devices, or people, or a favorite book.

;laskfjw idk TL;DR, these books would not only not be maggie stiefvater books if adam and ronan just... got engaged and were having a happy, fluffy time of it (and fwiw, declan and jordan are distinctly NOT having a happy fluffy time??)—they would also fucking suck. they would not be entries into this world. they would be doing these characters a fucking disservice. so just. everyone needs to calm down and realize they can just not read something if it makes them mad. what's that meme with the skeleton? you can just LEAVE!!! you can put the book down instead of harassing the fucking author, who is doing nothing but staying true to herself and her motivations in storytelling.

clearly i have a lot of feelings about this. if you read this far, blessings be on your funky little soul, you absolute legend.

[wander-wren]

Wren’s Concept Box

i always have a thousand ideas for different fics in my head, so this is where i keep track of them! since these are just ideas i’m throwing around, you’re also welcome to take them for yourself, as long as you tell me so i can go see it and hype you up!!

my current wips generally take priority, but i’m always down to just chat about everything here. i’m also a rlly big pushover and easily convinced to write things, lol, so do with that what you will. obligatory disclaimer that there’s no guarantee i’ll write anything here, and if i stop being interested in a concept i’ll delete it.

Upcoming Fics

these fics are almost certainly going to be written eventually bc they’re connected to current wips/completed fics, i just haven’t gotten to start them yet.

three of swords- power of three rewrite following my other rewrite fics. main changes: three are born in windclan, sol actually has a purpose, and their powers have been…reimagined. also hollyleaf has a power.

sign of the four- omen of the stars rewrite. main changes: dovewing is the fourth cat, not firestar. other changes TBD.

hold my hand (i’ll lead you through)- working title, third installment in the emetophobic!adam verse, but WAY fluffier than the others. more montage/character study style of the gangsey helping adam.

Other Ideas

everything not 90% guaranteed. ordered alphabetically by fandom, and in no particular order after that. a few have titles, most don’t.

BNHA

there’s beauty in the bleeding (at least you feel something)- touch-starved!todoroki who doesn’t know how to get touch except via sparring. eventually some?? people?? figure it out and there is fluff

snowed in- huddling for warmth/mission gone wrong bkdk with todoroki third wheeling, and potential ot3?

only time we’ve held hands (i threw a punch and you caught it)- the title is the concept i just Like It. definitely bkdk, maybe…soulmark fic? idk.

dabihawks old guard au- i wrote in this universe for whumptober and had a lot of fun, so i’m definitely down to write a full longfic with it at some point. when i have fewer longfics in progress lol.

The Old Guard

joenicky character study- them through the ages. for the express purpose of writing their final death bc i have Thoughts and Opinions on it but i don’t just want to write it by itself, yknow?

The Raven Cycle

gansey and the ship of theseus- the world needs more gansey angst! i imagine my guy has weird feelings about being resurrected twice. sarchengsey roadtrip era

pynch & possession- just adam post That Scene at the end of the raven king hating himself/being terrified bc he hurt ronan

cambridge, take two- a different version of ronan going to harvard in cdth, with no murder crabs but still angst. honestly i don’t remember what i thought with this and my notes have like no details but i’m intrigued.

soulmarks- au where people get to choose soulmates, and they can be unrequited. once you choose someone, a mark appears on the first place they touched you, like a tattoo, that represents them. if they choose you back, same thing. ik that destroys the idea of soulmates but i like the idea of the gangsey choosing to be bound to each other.

pynch mind reading- after cabeswater possesses adam, either he can hear ronan’s thoughts or ronan can hear adam’s, or both. then they fall in love, or something.

genderbent pynch- no thoughts i just rlly like lesbians. girl!ronan owns my entire soul.

Six of Crows

character studies- thats all, just. getting in their heads. a little series. i have a nina one i wrote for a friend as a gift but that was like two years ago and i’m afraid to check if it holds up. but i like doing them.

Warriors

mosskit lives au- i had this idea ages ago where mosskit survives and somehow manages to reach bloodclan? and becomes it’s leader instead of scourge? idk about the logic there. but they (they’re nonbinary to me) are obsessed with revenge on bluestar and become the Actual big bad of tpb, pulling the strings on everything.

swiftgorse- i was introduced to swiftpaw/gorsepaw and idk what i’d do with it but i’m very interested

Welcome to Night Vale

ripping at the seams- cecil finally cracks under the pressure of being night vale’s voice. the “stuck in my booth, only able to narrate and not to help” quote inspired this.

carlos 113 aftermath- i have a note about carlos learning about the events of 113 and freaking out but i don’t fully remember that episode or my thought process. i’m still intrigued.