#thanks for letting me ramble about vegetarian Ronan 🥰

[mychemicalrachel]

tell me more about your vegetarian Ronan Lynch agenda

Aah, gladly! 🙏

Ronan grew up on a farm, he was raised in a barn surrounded by animals, some of which are probably older than he is, and with the kind of private life the Lynches lived, secluded and secretive, I have no doubt he was really really close with some of those animals. He loved them, he cared for them. Take a moment to imagine young Ronan hanging out in the fields with a bunch of cows, talking to them, telling them all the secrets he isn't allowed to tell anyone else, things he's too afraid to share with even his brothers. They're his pets, his friends.

I don't think it's ever specified what kind of farm Niall ran, but I think it's safe to assume that whether it was a cow from their own farm or a neighboring farm, there was at least one time in Ronan’s life that Niall brought home some "fresh beef." And Ronan cannot eat it. We all know how compassionate Ronan is, do you really think he would be able to eat something that had a face? A name??? And I think that slaughtering any of the animals Ronan personally knew would've absolutely destroyed him.

It's just that at first; the fresh beef. It feels different to eat store-bought prepackaged meat because it's not someone Ronan knew. But as he got older, he realized that it wasn't really all that different at all, that the meat he got at the store was once an animal and it was raised just to die and maybe someone like Ronan had really loved that animal, or even worse, maybe nobody had ever loved that animal.

And to also further my Niall Lynch is a bad father agenda, I think, in some ill willed attempt to get Ronan to understand the circle of life, he took young Ronan to a slaughterhouse. That was a mistake. Niall thought that having Ronan see the whole process through would help him come to terms with it; their job is to care for the animals and then the animals get to go on to fulfill their purpose and nourish some family. But that backfires when Ronan takes one look at the facility and breaks down. Niall has to literally drag him away because Ronan gets upset and tries to set some of the cows free (it does not work, cows are kinda slow so they don't get very far).

After that, Ronan swears off meat. I think the whole avocado on pizza thing started off as a misunderstanding. Gansey and Ronan had only just recently become friends, they're still figuring each other out, and Gansey wants to make a good impression, so when they to to Nino’s the first time, he wants to be considerate. He looks at the menu and thinks "what would my new vegetarian best friend like on pizza?" and this lovable dipshit decides of course Ronan would like avocado. Because avocado is good and it is not a meat and Gansey feels awful proud of himself for that suggestion. And Ronan, poor gay Ronan who has the biggest crush on Gansey and doesn't want to hurt his feelings, goes SURE 🥴 let's order avocado on my half of the pizza! And it just becomes tradition after that 😂