#neurosses

[audikatia]

TRICK OR TREAT!

Yay! Thank you!

Here is an unedited section from the next chapter of Transubstantiation, as well as a little glimpse into what my writing method is like.

&&&&&

Adam’s eyes caught on a tattooed hook crawled out over the collar of Ronan’s jacket, the complex physical machine of his shoulders as he unlocked the door to St. Agnes with all the grace of a thief.

He thought of the series of locks furiously attached to the door at the Barns, of Ronan’s nearly inaudible sigh of relief as Matthew clicked the car lock behind him, and he marveled at Ronan’s trust in locks. He thought of Ronan telling him to lock himself in his car that night he found Tad. It didn’t matter. He had found the body anyway.

-

The suffocating scent of incense and the sweet odor of prayer

-

Fingers wet with holy water, Ronan was only halfway finished his sign of the cross when he stalled.

“Adam.”

-

(More under the cut)

-

a small gold cross on a chain around his neck at the hollow of his throat

-

Ronan gave a smoker’s breath: a deep inhalation through flared nostrils, slow exhale through parted breath. It was too much, too loud in the way of sounds in church.

-

It was, Adam thought, like when he was younger and still living in the trailer park with his parents, when he would hedge at his door to his tiny bedroom and flick the lights off before flinging his tiny body onto his bed. That was back when he thought the monster was under the bed, not sitting in the recliner drinking a beer.

-

Ronan swore, “Jesus, Mary, and fuckface Joseph.”

- Adam tasted his own heartbeat

-

Because there, under the broken gaze of a sorrowing Christ, lay disquieting heaps of dead birds.

Adam thought the greatest testament to how familiar he had grown in Ronan’s home was his newfound ability to detect the many shades of Chainsaw’s mood. Before, he had always classified her and possibly all birds as expressionless or at least of only one unwavering temperament.

But he knew better now, cold realization filling his lungs as he looked at the dead crows at the altar.

Their stillness was nothing like Chainsaw’s own still, alertness when she perched on tree limbs to scare her prey. This was a stillness that promised movement was over. There was nothing left alive in them.

-

Ronan grabbed him from behind, impossibly strong arms wrapped around him. The scent of Ronan’s sweat and deodorant cut through the stifling stench of incense.

“Adam, stop! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Chainsaw! What if it’s Chainsaw?”

“These little shits are too small to be Chainsaw. She’s at home right now with a hot dog hangover. She’s not here.”

-

His hand scrambled across Ronan’s chest blindly, fingers catching at the gaps between the buttons

-

"You shouldn’t have to see that."

-

Desperate whispers at the limits of his hearing

He felt like he was standing several paces behind himself

It (the wall? The church?) could hold him up. It owed him that much.

He shut his eyes prayerfully

burning points of life that ghost the eye

A message of violence

Like a fire on the other side of the room

&&&&&&

I hate how long it's taking me to write this chapter this entire fic, but I am still enjoying it when I do get the chances here and there to write. It's been such a bad combo of having too many jobs and too much brain fog to really get all the sentences down. So much of my draft looks like this: patches of sentences, half-formed passages, random snatches of poetic sayings that I will eventually string together into a coherent chapter.

But I really will mash it all together into a new chapter and eventually a finished fic. Eventually lol

[dickggansey]

I JUST HAVE TO SAY. you always reblog such great art and imagery — truly one of my favorite tumblr blogs! I love seeing you on my dash :D

OMG???? THANK YOU SO MUCH???? saying that is so so so sweet of you omg it means a lot to meeee <3<3<3<3 i absolutely love seeing you on my dash too!!!! aaaaa thank youuuuuu

[donkeyparalyzed]

Adam and Ronan inspired by amazing fanfic (autor @neurosses)

[eruditetyro]

@friendofcars tagged me to share books I'm reading in 2025! i usually don't prep a book list so this is a fun exercise. rachel - fully cribbed some books from your and @neurosses' lists. thanks for the tag and the inspiration!

The Traitor Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickenson / Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver / Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin / Zodiac - Neal Stephenson / The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin / A Poetry Handbook - Mary Oliver / The Odyssey - trans. Emily Wilson / The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down - Anne Fadiman / The Secret History - Donna Tartt

I tag @yarrow-heather-and-hollyhock @joculine @thematicparallel @maplehazelnut @unloneliest @premiumgelato

[thesehandsfic]

Hi! You do not have to answer this question if you don't want to, but I was curious why you chose to portray Niall as an abuser in Tenebroso. There is no CSA in canon, so I wonder how you came to that? No pressure to reply :)

hi sure complicated question but definitely worth answering.

it's my opinion there is actually subtext in canon to support this (this being: ronan as a victim of csa). other people have talked about this, i know i'm not the first to think this and i won't be the last. i don't remember specifically which authors/bloggers have discussed it, but it's an interpretation of canon that i've definitely seen before.

when i first read the books as they were released, that's what i thought ronan's Deal was going to be; like i remember genuinely thinking that's where the author was going with it, and i turned out to be wrong, but the subtext is there.

this portrayal isn't based on things we know about niall (since we don't really know that much about niall tbh), but instead, it's based on things we know about ronan. some examples:

- something bad happens to ronan at night that he's not allowed to talk about

- ronan's father refuses to explain or educate him regarding what is happening to him at night

- he is isolated from the outside world by virtue of his "secret" and by nature of his upbringing

- he has fraught relationships with his siblings, particularly the older sibling, who "knew" about "the secret" and was not as understanding/helpful as ronan might have liked/needed regarding "the secret"

- he's weirdly attached to his father and holds him in strangely reverent regard

- he's an alcoholic, has a tendency to self-harm, he acts out for attention, is depressed, misanthropic, and "othered" from his peers

- nightmares/sleep related trauma/sleep paralysis/kills himself in his dreams/monsters appear to him in his dreams and hurt him

- he has a pretty notable reaction to adam's choice of material for the greenmantle plot; csa is the absolute worst thing adam could think to pin on this guy, and ronan is (in my opinion) triggered by it

- he hates himself/sees himself as "wrong" or "alien"

- he is destructive towards his personal property and is triggered when he returns to his childhood home/is reminded of specific things that took place in his house

- he has a deep seated compulsion/desire to please/conform/succeed

- unable to attach/bond in a healthy/regulated manner

- strange relationship with his brother, particularly interesting is that he often refers to them as a married set of parents; he refers to himself as "daddy" and himself and his brother as "mommy and daddy"

- he has a problem with authority, specifically with male figures of authority, especially those who try to "parent" or "teach" him

all of these things are not necessarily ironclad, but i spent a lot of time discussing this with @neurosses at the time of writing, trying to decide if this was a path i wanted to take or an interpretation of ronan & niall that i felt was correct, so possibly she will have something to add since this is a topic we discussed/hashed out/worked to ground in canon.

i have said before that it's my belief if you are taking away ronan's magic, you have to give him something else; there must be a wound of some sort. this doesn't HAVE to be child abuse, but if you remove the aspect of magic from the things i listed above, you have a pretty solid foundation for an alternative interpretation of his canonical trauma.

specifically regarding tenebroso, i chose not to give declan that shared experience, but there is some basis for it regarding declan as well:

- niall turned him into his "work wife" when his own wife left/his dream wife wasn't designed to be smart/useful/a true equal

- he is parentified, almost by force (assigned guardian in the will)

- strained relationship with his siblings, particularly the one that still genuinely loves their father/doesn't see father's faults

- bears resentment towards younger sibling that he perceives was "preferred" or the favorite based on the attention paid to him by their father

i don't expect everyone to agree with me and i don't expect this interpretation to become widely accepted, but i do believe there is basis for it in canon (the entire lynch clan has serious Gothic Family vibes but that's a whole 'nother essay), and i really am not sure i have anything else to say about it; it is easier for me to explore these things in fiction/character study than it is for me to sit and expound upon it through meta. so i hope this is a satisfactory answer for you!

[sonboyadam]

9 books i plan on reading in 2025, I was tagged by my lovelies @pociondeodio and @reputayswift thank uu <3

tagging: @ellipsea @sulkybbarnes @astudyinfreewill @faeparrish @ffrancisforever @henessy @neurosses if anyone wants to do it, using it for rec purposes if you do👀

[friendofcars]

@neurosses tagged me to share books i'm reading in 2025!

i also plan to re-read real life, the secret history, and beloved this year. i'm excited!!!

@eruditetyro @girls4losers @hauntedcamaro @brokebackbutch @rosalynmarie123 - what are you looking forward to reading this year?

[smokeandjollyranchers]

A peek at the Pynch dolls i made for @neurosses that have finally made their way home! (Long wait fully on me) I’m glad they finally got to you!!! And that you’re a fan of Ronan’s lil face

Thanks for all the advice on Ronan’s shaved head and tricks to help me darken up Adam’s hair cuz he looked like a little angel at first and that wasn’t right at all 😂

And BOOm officially made TRC fan art. I’ve paid my tithe

[drowningbluenile]

tagged by @neurosses, books I plan to read in 2025!

tagging @2016moonlight and @rversthpolarity in an attempt to force them to post

[audikatia]

hello! i am very early in on reading transubstantiation (still in the first few chapters!) and it really just struck me how cleverly you've taken the coffee shop framing (which has its own loaded implications within the context of fanfic) and turned it on its head in introducing the string of perverse murders. i love that it's a genuine mystery with a confident sense of its own internal lore. i love how brittle your adam parrish is. i love how the setting is textured and grimy and brimming with secrets. you're awesome!

This has been sitting in my inbox for two months and I have thought about it every day with sheer excitement at such a nice comment and also mounting shame at how long it has taken me to respond lol

Thank you so much for sending this! I feel so often with fanfic and also published fiction that I can never really get what I truly want which is a combination of a compelling mystery and an engaging romantic pairing. There's either ROMANCE with a lil plot going on or there is MYSTERY and the couple sort of gets together at some point but it's ancillary at best. So I really wanted to be able to write my best approximation of what I want to read lol

And as for the coffee shop part, I really love the classic trope of "it's a cute small town where nothing bad ever happens EXCEPT FOR THAT ONE UNSOLVED MURDER" but I wanted the fanfic version of the small town setting which landed on a coffee shop

It means so much to me that you love my brittle Adam. "Brittle" is one of my main adjectives for his characterization that I refer back to when writing him to make sure I'm keeping him in line. One of my favorite lines in the books is about how Ronan recognizes the cracked lines all over Adam and I really wanted to reflect that in my own work, so thank you.

Really, thank you for this! I've been spending a stupid amount of time and energy on this and I always feel like people have forgotten about it since I don't have much time to write, so it's just really nice to get such thoughtful messages. Thank you!

[ahotknife]

hey! happy holidays! Do you have any fic recs? I’ve been in such a fic slump lately (preferably pynch but honestly any TRC works for me). I feel like I’ve read everything that I have seen be recced by others. I don’t mind wips and i am not picky when it comes to genres. p.s i loved go running!!

hi, sure, here are some "deep cuts" but as i've said before i rly do not read very much fic. i'll include some i feel like i don't see people suggesting very often, so they might be new to you. i don't read WIPs so i have none of those to offer unfortunately

the collected by philosophersandfools

unsettled nighttime creatures by asael

auriga by friendofcars

boxes on the lawn by kelliealtogether

speak easy, and tell no lies by pinkhorizon

obligatory have you read aluminum cowboy ad spot

i hope this was helpful probably you'd be better off asking @neurosses but i'll include her rec list here cus it's way more thorough than mine

[donkeyparalyzed]

The @neurosses  started a new fic and it's love again. Very inspiring love.

"For one electric second, their eyes meet, and Ronan feels completely stirred, as though he had been asleep this entire time after all. He sends up a simple, inexplicable, desperate prayer to God:

Please.

The glass shatters."

[antibioware]

@neurosses THEY'RE NOT EVEN DRINKING WINE THAT TASTES OF ABANDONMENT STRAIGHT FROM THE BOTTLE... They're just shitty fantasy cops

Dude the Moderators are so comedically evil it's insane

[thesehandsfic]

When is Chapter 2 bestie??🌚🌚

that's a great question. let's ask my editor. @neurosses when is chapter 2, bestie?

[friendofcars]

tagged by @neurosses <3 <3 <3

List five things you never get tired of writing. it can be tropes, themes, characters, phrases, whatever brings you joy. then tag five people!

people looking at themselves in mirrors

alliteration

physiological references (esp. neuro, cardiovascular) because i cannot help myself

dense introspective passages, sparse dialogue

personifying environmental features/objects

unsure of who is actively writing at the moment, but anyone who wants to answer (not just for [fan]fiction but for meta, poetry, any other written endeavors), i tag you!

[smokeandjollyranchers]

My bestie @neurosses tagged me in the last line game, and for the first time in forever I actually DO have a WIP. Kismet

—-

Adam speaks again, before Gansey can dwell too hard, before his every thought is laid bare on his face and Adam jumps to his own conclusions. “I hear something. Or feel something. Or. I’m not sure exactly. But it’s keeping me up. Do—-“ he trails off, kaleidoscope eyes staring at Gansey in the darkness. Blue, green, brown, hazel. Hope, fear, defiance, heartbreak.

Do you want to come? Hangs heavy between them.

Gansey sits himself up in bed, a hand running through unruly hair, the other already looking for his glasses. “Am I invited?”

—-

I have been out of the writing game so long lol I don’t know who’s still spitting out words BUT @neurosses you never DONT want to share some wip and @daciafu I’ve seen you in your TLT era, are you making anything cool 👀