#ronan lynch meta

[theravenkin]

been thinking a lot about low-empathy adam parrish (via @parrishwife here and @crimeronan here ) and i'd like to add that i also think ronan is low-empathy, but in a different way, and that this difference is what causes most of the conflict between them (in this essay i will-)

so basically, in very simple psychological terms there are two main sides to empathy. on one side, you've got cognitive empathy- the ability to see things from another person's perspective in an objective manner and understand why they might be feeling a certain way even if you don't feel "for" them; however, you might think that they are overreacting. then there's emotional empathy, which is when you see someone having strong emotions or going through something tough and you feel "for" them, sometimes literally; you might feel nausea or pains in your chest from experiencing someone else in emotional pain, or you might feel elated when someone else is happy or excited. that doesn't necessarily mean, though, that you can see things from that person's perspective; even if you feel for someone, you might not think that they're coming from a place that matters because you can't put yourself in their position. when both of these main types of empathy are present, then you can also have compassionate empathy, which is like both working together- you feel for someone and can see things from their perspective. people with low empathy may struggle with both of the main types of empathy, but some may only struggle with one while maybe being hyper-empathetic in the other type; i'm pretty sure the latter is common among autistic people. i, for one, have very strong emotionally empathetic reactions to things, but i have a really hard time seeing things from others perspectives; so while i may feel really bad for someone, it can be hard for me to understand why they feel bad in the first place.

okay. now. blorbo thoughts.

i think that while adam has an easier time with cognitive empathy (though still struggles with it a bit), he has not developed a very strong sense of emotional empathy at all. whereas, on the other hand, i think ronan is hyperempathic when it comes to pure emotions, but has a very very hard time with cognitive empathy; the way he thinks tends to be more egocentric, meaning it's hard for him to remember that other people don't always think, feel, or process the same way he does (this is what i struggle with, personally, but i think ronan struggles a whole lot more with it).

i could go pulling a bunch of textual evidence, and god do i want to, but lord i ain't got the time. so im just gonna point out a couple things ronan does: he often hugs and comforts people when he feels that they're upset (and he often notices when people are upset before others do, when they're trying to hide it etc) but he doesn't care if these people want to be hugged- he just does it. the only person he doesn't do this with is adam, i think because adam is one person ronan works really hard to understand. ronan also tends to say things without thinking or caring about how they might make people feel, but he still feels so strongly himself (re: bronan "i'm not proud of it" "i'll be proud for you", ronan, read the room). he feels for every dreamer, even those he hasn't met yet, and that empathy drives him so crazy he goes and does a bunch of questionable things in order to try to make things better for people. but he cannot imagine any justification for why adam didn't text him back within a couple hours other than that adam now hated him suddenly (essentially, can't understand how adam doesn't know what ronan is thinking without communicating it).

ronan's inner monologue is very frequently about himself and how he's feeling; when he talks about others, he describes what they say and do and look like, but can't seem to explain how they think or why. adam, in comparison, is constantly psychoanalyzing the people around him, trying to understand why they do what they do and how they tick. part of this is his analytic nature and part of it is the remnants of a survival tactic- the need to understand his abuser, get inside their head, in order to avoid or prevent the next blow. but i think, too, all this analyzing has divorced him from feeling strongly for others, once again, as a survival tactic/coping mechanism- because he believes that as soon as he feels for someone, he becomes them and loses his autonomy. this is only beneficial when dealing with abusers, though. so when he's dealing with his loved ones, adam has to parse through their actions, codify their behaviors and what they mean, and establish heuristics of how they think in order for him to not cross a line and hurt them without meaning to. i feel like i can say more on this but it's late and im tired and i am no psychologist, just autistic and insane about characters

so i think that this difference is a lot of what makes pynch work (the impulse/impulse control dynamic or the right brain/left brain dynamic, but much much deeper and more complex obvs). but i also think that this is where most of their conflict comes from. ronan feels so deeply for and about adam, so much so that he doesn't know how to process it and it eats him alive. but even still, he can't quite understand why adam works the way he does, why his motivations are what they are, why he holds the values he does; usually, ronan just accepts that adam is adam and life goes on, but sometimes ronan gets so frustrated that he can't just accept that adam does things that- to ronan- make 0 sense. (think of the garage fight scene, just before the hand lotion, where ronan tells adam he should just quit school- a pretty tone deaf thing to say, knowing adam, but ronan was getting frustrated and couldn't understand why adam needed to keep working himself to death.) then there's adam, who typically understands where ronan is coming from, but doesn't understand why ronan feels so strongly about things, especially other people- especially him. he struggles to understand why ronan keeps helping him despite being told not to- which is why ronan does things without asking (ie, the rent), because he knows adam won't understand. adam may understand where ronan is coming from, but sometimes he just may not care. he doesn't want ronan to feel badly, but it's hard to motivate yourself to do something about it when you can't understand what the fuss is all about. think about the fight over the green mantle envelope: to adam, it's practical and logical, and he doesn't understand why the whole thing is upsetting to ronan or why he should care- if it gets the job done, doesn't matter how unpleasant the process is. ronan, however, doesn't care as much about practical; he can't understand why adam thinks this is okay, because he has such a hard time understanding that others have different values and priorities than he does.

anyway. this took so long to write. someone please read it and understand what i'm saying.

[miseria-fortes-viros]

do u ever think about how niall lynch was a devilishly handsome son of a bitch who was impossible not to like, naturally commanded the attention of everyone in the room, told stories as easily as breathing, ruled over his own particular corner of the world, didn’t even seem real until you knew him, died facedown on a gravel driveway, and then do you ever think about gansey.

[ronanlynchdefender]

The political stances of The Raven Cycle characters are so fascinating to me. You got Blue over here who is very much a progressive activist in the making. She recognizes things like misogyny and is not afraid to call those things out even when it concerns her closest friends. Because of that, I definitely see her as the type of activist who would be in the front lines at protests whether that be at the Capitol, college campuses, at the border, or as is the case in the dreamer trilogy, tied to a tree. She is the type of person who demands change in our current system and would demand it loudly and through acts of protest or civil disobedience.

Then you have Adam who displays no strong desire to change the system and whose only desire is to rise up in that system. He wants to climb the social ladder and assimilate to those of higher social status which is partially why he envies Gansey so much in the beginning because Gansey was born into it. Adam still tries to do this in the dreamer trilogy by essentially pretending to be a Gansey-like figure while at Harvard despite hating it. Eventually, Adam gives up on trying to belong within this higher social class and "climbing the ladder" but then strangely enough becomes a fed, which means just integrating into another form of hierarchy and power structure. And I feel like a more interesting arc would've been rejecting being a part of these societal systems altogether.

Which I suppose now leads us to Ronan who is a literal anarchist. He actually rejects all societal systems and rules and it permeates every aspect of his life. But actually, I shouldn't say all because there is one societal institution which he does enjoy partaking in: religion. With the exception of his catholicism, he does not engage in any other societal institution: education, law, politics. He hates it, in fact, It is antithetical to his being which is what makes his characterization so perfect because of course a gay farmer god would hate oppressive rules and structures (except for religion). That's not even mentioning that he is a canonical ecoterrorist that cost the US government a billion dollars. But what is really interesting about his character (and where his and Blue's political stances differ) is that because he rejects these systems he has no interest or stake in changing them. He'd sooner tear down the system than try to reform it.

And then there’s Gansey who doesn't seem to engage in politics and would rather spend his days reading his little Welsh books and going on his fun adventures. Of course, he is able to do this largely because he has the privilege to not worry about politics or social class. It seems that Blue's influence changes this as they are both chaining themselves to trees in protest during the dreamer trilogy. Other than that, I don't really have a lot to say about Gansey and his politics. But I find it very interesting that Maggie has created this close-knit group of characters with such varying relationships to how they view politics and social structures. I tried to draw out a 2-axis grid to show their differences, but I don't know if it really works because I feel like Gansey kinda screws it up but nevertheless I like how they each represent different ends of a spectrum sort of.

[cabeswaterdrowned]

Yes Ronan’s flirting technique would be dubious with anyone else but have to say he really does quite well with tailoring the flirting / wooing game for Adam specifically. Very correct call about taking him to the Barns so Adam can swoon over it and see Ronan in that space embodying the things about it he admires, and then he assigns him research and calls him smart because he saw how that worked on Adam when Gansey did that and also has freshly witnessed Adam’s teacher kink when it comes to his dad’s murderer. All I’m saying is he was taking notes on things that weren’t Latin.

[sharknosed]

wait. waitwaitwait guys. ronan is the car crash. gansey is the broken car. adam is the car mechanic. SHIT. i’m too tired to elaborate right now but i am having galaxy brain level thoughts atm

[nibblette]

Does anyone have a reblog of the post with the PowerPoint about all the textual pre-BLLB evidence of Pynch’s mutual attraction? I can’t find it on this hellsite. It’s got all the bits like Ronan wanting to pick Adam’s scabs(?!?) and Adam going on about Ronan’s “black painted poetry” swearing.

[baladric]

the thing i always return to is the wonder at maggie stiefvater's very specific talent for vivid and multifaceted characters.

like, the present marvel: the first dream sequence in dream thieves, when ronan dreams the puzzle box and then is stuck watching himself and thinks, "The exterior of this early morning Ronan didn't look at all how he felt on the inside." and based on everything we know about him, you expect the thought to continue into some musing about being soft in sleep, or looking young or uncharacteristically peaceful—and then he hits us instead with a thought of the brutal sharpness of his own body, "Anything that didn't impale itself on the sharp line of this sleeping boy's cruel mouth would be tangled in the merciless hooks of his tattoo, pulled beneath his skin to drown."

and he's so startled by this sharpness! he looks like a weapon, when all he wants is to dream of light—but we don't know that yet, right? here you've spent an entire book's worth of time with the externality of ronan, and the immutable certainty that his sharpness is cultivated—the shaved head, the tattoo, the jagged mannerisms and outspoken cruelty. and then we get into his head, and he's just as anxious and tangled as gansey or adam or blue! he's just as baffled by his own self as the rest of them—if not moreso, bc his trc arc specifically is so much about queer monstrosity. and just... stiefvater does this shit in single lines that sound like they belong in a siken poem, just tossed into the middle of other shit. "a miracle of moving parts," "you soft, spoiled thing," all of blue's brief and undwelled-upon little annoyances about being called sensible over and over again, until we finally get the bit about not thinking about the things she can't have (a phone, a big brilliant future, a kiss) and hence, her so-called Sensibility. noah's hands seeming "to belong fewer places than most people's."

she does this over and over again, redefining a whole-ass character w one sentence, and the thing is, i always think i've gotten used to this it!! but then i reread, another year older, another year farther along as a writer in my own right, and all new things jump out at me. and it's just awe-inspiring?? and regular inspiring. i don't think there's another writer that motivates me to create so profoundly as maggie stiefvater and i will cry forever about these children

[clotpolesonly]

Blue Lily, Lily Blue ch 1 // Blue Lily, Lily Blue ch 46

[nyacromancey]

REREADING THE DREAM THIEVES AND???? margaret. this is unfair.

[edensgardener]

op the notes

adam making up a version of himself thats successful in regular traditional society and desperately trying to distance himself from magic and art and ending up a liar and realising he cant escape it and trying just makes him miserable even tho he thought it would keep him safe. oh did i say adam? i couldve sworn that was declan

[miseria-fortes-viros]

he lets me hit bc i follow him around like a guard dog and i say stupid shit just to see him smile and i drive way over the speed limit bc he wants to so bad but he never will and i stay up with him when he can’t sleep and we share a carton of orange juice and he looks like a prince in the middle of a dollar general at three in the morning and he leans back on the headrest and the dashboard lights turn his throat green and the bite of possibility is so urgently present i can feel the teeth sinking into my throat and i wonder if mine looks green to him too if he’s even looking and the car is so quiet until he says when i’m gone dream me the world something new for every night and it rips my heart out of my chest because i want him to stay or i want to go with him i just want to be by his side and there are a thousand things i want to say but i don’t say anything i just want him to come back please come back i promise i’ll be better i. where was i going with this

[one-squash-one-end]

I wrote a giant Raven Cycle analysis

Hi! Over the last year or so I've been working on a sort of essay about various themes in the raven cycle series, and I finally finished it a few weeks ago.

It is titled: "Why I love The Raven Cycle - An excessive analysis of the themes of friendship, queerness and growing up".

And since tumblr loves its meta (and bc I love peer validation) I've decided to start uploading it bit by bit here, making this the masterpost (if I can figure out the logistics of the linking lmao, bear with me)

(beware of spoilers up to greywaren starting at like 3b!)

Introduction

What even is the Raven Cycle?

Trust me, the characters are queer as fuck and I can prove it a) Blue Sargent b) Gansey c) Adam Parrish d) Ronan Lynch e) Noah f) Henry Cheng g) Honorary mentions

The Gangsey is a polycule

Analyzing the reoccurring themes a) Friendship b) Being a teen/growing up c) (Found) Family d) Magic (as a metaphor) e) Further themes I appreciate

Drawing a conclusion

Click here to start with the introductory parts!

1. Introduction

So here’s the thing: I love fiction almost as much as I love my friends. There’s something deeply comforting about the escapism, even if the book actually makes me want to scream and throw it on the floor (only one book has been thrown so far, I promise!).  Fiction is a healthy thing to occupy my thoughts with: headcanons! Quotes being on loop in my brain! Just fandoms!

And for me, if I am hooked on a book (series), it does not even need a good plot where a lot of things happen. In fact, I would say that my enjoyment of a book is made up of 30% plot and about 70% characters and vibes. If the characters are bland, if they do not make me feel much emotion, it likely won’t be more than 4 stars (additional info: I am way too nice rating books!). I really, really need to love the characters, to be able to relate to some aspects of them, or it just won’t become an obsession.

Since I have already started explaining that a bit, let’s look at this question: What is important to make a book special to me? 1. I need to cry reading it. 2. I have to think about it often, even weeks to months after having read it. 3. Obviously, I need to love the characters. 4. I need to be in the fandom! This can be hard with some books, but the internet is a whimsical space allowing you to find at least a small number of people who are obsessed with a work of fiction to a similar extent as you are.

Now, why am I elaborating on this so much? It’s because The Raven Cycle did all that for me. It is my favorite comfort book series at the moment, for all those aspects mentioned, but of course I cannot just leave it at that. No, I wrote a whole-ass analysis on headcanons and some of its themes. You’re welcome.

2. What even is The Raven Cycle?

The Raven Cycle is all I adore and live for (next to my friends). So, naturally, it’s a book series, specifically a four book young adult contemporary fantasy series by American author Maggie Stiefvater. The books in question are: The Raven Boys (2012), The Dream Thieves (2013), Blue Lily, Lily Blue (2014) and The Raven King (2016), and yes I will admit that the publishing dates are a bit of a red flag. There is also the very relevant follow-up series called The Dreamer Trilogy (Call Down The Hawk, Mister Impossible, Greywaren), but it’s a lot less easy to get into that here as I do not know these entire books by heart, so I’ll stick to the original tetralogy here.

To stick to red flags, the books are set in the fictional Henrietta, a rural town in non-fictional Virginia, US, in the 2010s. However, that doesn’t really say *that* much about the plot, so let me summarize that really quick, because I can do better than the official synopsis! (Or let’s pretend I can.)

Blue Sargent comes from a family of psychics, yet she does not have any powers of her own. Even worse, she is a bit of an amplifier for the others, meaning she is always somehow but never directly involved in the business. As if that isn’t enough for an identity crisis, every psychic she has ever met has told her that her kiss would kill her true love. Yikes.

But because she is that amplifier, she comes to a church watch on St. Mark’s Eve, where psychics see the spirits of those to die within the following year. It’s important business, but to her it’s really just staring into the dark. Until she does actually see a spirit: That of Gansey. Of course this is not a coincidence. No, to add to this teen’s mount of problems, there are only two reasons why a non-seer would see someone’s spirit: They are their true love, or they killed them. Or, in Blue’s case, maybe both.

The aforementioned Gansey is Henrietta’s Golden Boy, the son of politicians (read: he’s fucking loaded). He does not run with the Republicans though, he runs with dead Welsh kings, meaning he has been searching for the probably dead, presumably sleeping Welsh king Glendower (*1350; †1416; yikes) for the past like seven years. Why the fuck would he do that? Well, legend says that he will grant a wish to whoever wakes him, and our favorite PTSD-ridden guy really wants that favor.

Aiding him are fellow Aglionby students Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch and Noah Czerny, plus Henry Cheng, though only a lot later in the series, but I really did not want to leave out that menace (affectionately) here. The paths of Blue and the boys cross because of Gansey’s search for Glendower, plus the fact that Blue works at a popular pizza place, but that’s a lot less whimsical. And, well, there’s the implication that Gansey might also be her true love, but perhaps she just kills him because of his bad fashion sense, it would be justified. Anyway, in true Famous Five fashion (Ronan is the dog; I won’t elaborate, the girls that get it, get it) they are of course not the only ones searching for the king, so it’s not completely a wholesome friend bonding activity all the way through.

Be prepared for: friendship and growing up, lots of treasure hunting, family mysteries, magical forests, illegal and slightly distasteful activities (our favorite of course), but most of all, heavily queer-coded (or even canonically queer) characters. Be Gay, Do Crime.

[cabeswaterdrowned]

Declan is described as looking like a combination of Ronan and a polished tailored guy like Gansey or Greenmantle, which in theory makes him like the pinnacle of the type of guys Adam is attracted too. Just don’t tell that to Adam Declan Ronan or Gansey it won’t go over well.

[seaemberthesecond]

Okay I'm going to try to articulate what made Greywaren fall so flat for me with the disclaimer that a) I'm sure many people, much more articulate than me have already explained this better than I ever could, and b) this is purely my reading of the text.

It - hmm. Ok.

A really long time ago, back before TRK came out, middle school me was trawling through mstief's Tumblr blog looking for Declan crumbs (I'm an OG you could say) and I came across this really interesting thing she said in response to some ask I've since forgotten. It was something about how Declan's function as a character in TRC was that of a stage-hand. Think of the series as a play, and between scenes when the lights go off, furniture gets rearranged and sets get moved and props get added and when the lights come back on the stage is transformed. Declan, she said, was one of the characters doing this furniture rearranging. He's moving things around in the dark, and while it might not be acknowledged in the play itself, the evidence is in front of us.

Declan's interiority is not a subject for TRC and is only hinted at through the acts of furniture-shifting. But how many of us pay attention to that when it's easier to focus on what the characters themselves are saying on-stage?

All this to say, we spend all of TRC believing that Declan is a bad brother and a bad person because Ronan keeps telling us he's a bad person and a bad brother, even though when you look at the material evidence it suggests the exact opposite. (Wanting your brother to not flunk out of school is not actually the crime Ronan makes it out to be) (especially when Declan's s proven right immediately in CDTH lmao)

What I'm trying to get at is this: Readers come into tdt primed to believe things from Ronan's pov, and why shouldn't we? Ronan was one of the main characters we spent four books following and growing an attachment to, while Declan was just the horrible older brother. So when Ronan spent four books saying how his brother was a liar and his dad was great actually, this is the information we go into tdt with, this is what we start out believing. But of course at the same time, lingering in our minds is Declan's disavowal of Niall's merits as a father. And the conflict between these two disparate views of the Lynch family is the central tension of The Dreamer Trilogy. Or at least it's supposed to be. The promised resolution, the reconciliation of these two worldviews and thus of the two brothers is what compels readers to actually pick up the books.

The books are marketed as being about the Lynch brothers. The first line of the series is "This is a story about the Lynch Brothers." What makes The Dreamer Trilogy interesting to readers is that for the first time we get to see Declan and Matthew, we get to see what they're thinking and feeling - about Ronan, about their parents, about the Barns, about everything.

We spend two books seeing the Lynch family through Declan's eyes, we see him grapple with his complicated relationship with his parents and his brothers' and his grief, we see him struggle and snap under the weight placed on him by by his parents' negligence and the immense responsibilities he's shouldering alone. And the implicit understanding here is that we're building towards an understanding between the brothers. For a series that is so powerfully about the joys of being known and the pain of being misunderstood, this is not a misbegotten expectation. Because if one thing is made clear by the first two books of tdt, it's that for all that Declan doesn't understand Ronan, Ronan doesn't understand Declan either.

To end the series on the emotional beat of Declan going 'Actually, my family was great and my childhood was amazing and I just gaslit myself for grief reasons' feels bizarre because we're...right back where we started? We're back to the zero point. Three books and a combined 1200 page count to reach the conclusion that... 'Ronan was right all along, Dad is great, and I'm just a liar, even to myself'??? Is like??? Why even bother writing these books then?? Why even bother reading them, if we're ending right back where we started?

An ending to this trilogy that doesn't have Ronan at least acknowledge that his parents were flawed people, that his childhood was radically different from that of his brother's, and that Declan has only ever been trying his best with his very limited resources feels hollow and lacklustre.

We end the series with Declan coming to terms with Ronan's powers and accepting that he can't keep him locked in a box just to keep him safe and Ronan being no closer to understanding Declan than he has ever been.

Everybody told me. Everybody told me that Greywaren would torpedo everything the last two books built. But like a naive fool, I thought how bad could it be? Welp, I fucked around and found out, I guess.

[sharknosed]

no because unguibus et rostro. yes it is literally “claws and beak” but it can also be interpreted very loosely as “tooth and nail”. i’m losing my fucking mind over it because it has so many layers. like yes adam and ronan both fought hard individually to be where they were in life, but they had to fight to be together too. but beyond that!! they are the tooth and nail. ronan is the tooth. he’s always associated with fanged animals and imagery (the snake, the shark-nosed bmw). he’s sharp edges, but in the way that broken pottery is. shattered, almost. there’s also a lot of focus on his mouth in other contexts. his smirks, him taking the pills with kavinsky, even just the words that come out of his mouth are all bite. meanwhile adam is the nail. yes everybody in the entirety of henrietta is in love with him, but what’s really fixated on by everyone is his hands. to the point where ronan literally breaks into adam’s car to give him something to make his hands feel better. (ronan’s love languages are something i could talk forever about too, but i’ll save that for a later date.) adam clawed his way to the life that he had in the books, and i think nails are a really good representation of that. yes he’s a little torn up. he’s chipped and bleeding. and in the exact same way that you get dirt under your nails, adam worries about being tainted by henrietta, and that his identity as someone from the rural south needs to be cleaned away before he can be someone of value. in the beginning of the series, he seems to really want to erase his history, and clipping broken fingernails feels like a really good analogy for that. additionally, the whole thing with ronan kissing/sucking adam’s fingers really seals the deal for me. healing each other. ronan’s mouth on adam’s hands. tooth and nail. unguibus et rostro. i’m going insane

[nibblette]

Did anyone else think Gansey was going avoid dying by going back into Glendower’s time the first time they read the Raven Cycle?

that’s what I thought the point of finding the 500yr Camaro tire was all about. I was sort of disappointed the series didn’t end that way on my first read. Also disappointed that ye olde car tire was a story dead end.

I also thought in some way that Gansey was Glendower in the past and Gwenllian was somehow his and Blue’s daughter.