#thinking about the different masks gansey has is so crazy like gansey on fire the gansey his family sees the gansey aglionby sees

[plutoslvr]

so i'm rereading trc with my friend and we're currently on bllb and i just read chapter 30 and in it blue's asking malory what gansey used to be like before he moved to henrietta and the gansey that malory describes to blue is so different from the gansey she currently knows and i just cant stop thinking about it.

first off, malory describes gansey as "small" as in not just his height but as in gansey was young and it makes sense because at the time gansey was 15 but it just kind of does something to my heart when i think about young, small gansey trying to figure out why he's still alive.

malory then goes on to say, "He was still trying to prove that he hadn't just hallucinated. He was still quite obsessed with the event [his death] itself." gansey first died when he was 10 and to be obsessing over your death for FIVE years trying to convince others but mostly yourself that you didn't make it up that you actually died and not some part of a childs imagination it must've fucked with him so bad???

then malory tells blue exactly how obsessed gansey was with his death and was to the extent that he was always drawing bees and hornets and "Got screaming nightmares over it- he had to get his own place since I couldn't sleep with it [...] Sometimes these fits would happen in the day, too. We'd just be toddling through some riding path in Leicestershire and next thing I knew he'd be on the ground clawing his face like a mental patient." the gansey that blue currently knows doesnt act like that but this was only two years prior its fucking INSANE and it's here blue starts to think about the facade gansey had learned to throw up since he was a kid.

AND IT GETS WORSE SOMEHOW?? earlier in bllb in chapter 3, gansey talks about how he felt like running and how it had been a long time since he had felt that way. at the time it didn't make sense like wdym by that gansey but then back in chapter 30 malory tells blue how gansey just disappeared one day. left most of his bags and left without a word to anyone not even his family who then called malory to ask for gasneys whereabouts. "He picked himself up and moved on so easily, so quickly. He had done it so many times before England, Jane, and it was old hat to him."

it makes blue rethink every conversation she had with gansey previously, similarly to when adam heard gansey's voice of fear in the cave in chapter one where gansey had the panic attack because its around this book where the gangsey start to figure, as blue puts it, "It was more like the Gansey she'd seen was a partial truth."

it's so very easy to pass off ganseys insecurities and his feelings about how he should comfort other people but they shouldn't do the same for him because he's had it the easiest (his words not mine) because he himself skips over it so fast. like he'll mention something and then act like he's never thought or said it, like its something normal which really isnt and then it slowly makes sense that gansey throughout the series, starts to lose that mask (there's multiple masks but thats a conversation for another time) and the readers and the gangsey get to see what the real gansey is like instead of the bulletproof, untouchable gansey they're used to seeing.

the idea of gansey running is insane in a good way because its nothing like the gansey we know, plus paired with the fact about how young gansey has me clawing at the walls because he's just this kid desperate to prove he wasn't hallucinating, trying to find some purpose to his life before he finds it in henrietta. a kid who was still terrified of his death who relived it, screaming every night who still had panic attacks anywhere and everywhere and would end up clawing at himself because there's hornets everywhere. a kid who doesn't stay in one place too long who learns to put on an easy smile to convince everyone okay and gets so good at it that it works and people think that hes normal and okay when he's anything but.

idk pre canon gansey is something that i need to inject into my bloodstream and analyse in a lab.

[shayberri789]

He makes me so ill. Some things I'd like to add:

(I've put in a readmore because good lord did this get long. Sorry op)

Ive had a theory that those meltdowns Malory described - reliving his death during the day - is the same thing that happens to Noah when he starts to become untethered to the leyline. You know how he relives his death in bllb? I think it's the same, and I don't know if that's better or worse. I think the closer you are to the event, the more often it happens. Because somewhere in time you are always dying, and the more connected you are to that time, the more you'll relive it

I think gansey likely had been gaslighting himself for a long time about his death, before he proved to himself that magic is real. Can you imagine, Baby gansey, miraculously alive, convinced he'd died and was saved by a mythical dead king, but there's not a scratch on him? Parents who love him but are still distant, not a single real friend he can trust, no one quite sure what to do with this strange boy? Gansey, stop saying you died. Look at you. You're perfectly healthy. Magic isn't real gansey. Your imagination is getting away with you - if you'd been stung by bees, you'd be dead gansey. But you're quite alive (but I did die! 10 year old gansey says desperately.) Stop being dramatic gansey. Stop talking about this nonsense - youre making your parents look bad. Dick, this is an important meeting, please don't bring up your welsh king or imagined death tonight okay dear? People will think you're crazy. Oh look at the rich kid! Has to make up some trauma in order to be special. Go ride in your fancy car asshole and stop mocking people with real trauma

And for years.... on and on and gansey is like fuck? Did I make it up? I need to stop with this I'm causing Problems for people. I'm being over dramatic. No one believes I died. I'm not traumatised! I'm perfectly fine! Look at me! Can a traumatised person do THIS? *whips up a blinding smile*

But then why do these nightmares persist? Why is the vision so clear in my mind every time I see a bee? My therapist doesn't believe I'm telling the truth and they'd know best.

Just imagine two years of everyone and yourself gaslighting you (intentionally or not) that nothing happened. You're Perfectly Fine. You're the son of the Ganseys, boy, act like it. You're not going to get any help or sympathy if you melt down or show distress so you better hide it. Hide your fear and your anxiety because that's the only way you're Valid. The only existence you're allowed. Keep repressing it and bottling it up until it's too much and you - need a break.

A short holiday to somewhere with a leyline, I don't know. Gansey splits off from his family when he Hears the locals talking about a headless black dog wandering the fields at dusk. Gansey is 12 and he has to see this, so he goes, along with a village boy who claims he can summon the rain when he sings in the fields, and who's seen the dog more than anyone

Dusk comes, with no dog in sight, so they decide to pass the time with the boy singing. And the rain comes, and there in the distance is a headless black dog that never seems to be closer than 6 meters, but to gansey, it's enough. It's proof.

He returns home dripping wet and filled with hope (goodness dick! Did you fall into a fountain? No, I got caught in some rain, is all. What? There hasn't been any rain in this town for days.) (For once, their denial is more evidence - because that was magic rain, and for one, gansey wasn't the only one to see it)

He researches the town and learns about leylines, and it starts.

He posters his parents into holidays all over the world, to carefully chosen places so he can do more research, and soon enough he stops bothering and just goes on his own. His parents are glad hes found something to occupy himself with that aren't his delusions. In time, they forget

I think it's said that Gansey spent the most time with Mallory than anywhere else barring Henrietta. What do you think it was like, working with him? This old eccentric man, just as much an expert in leylines as Gansey has become, and he's so kind. He's the fist person to believe gansey when he tells him about his death. It's more vulnerable than gansey has been with someone in years, and it sirs between them like a weighted secret. The nightmares never stopped - maybe it was after the first few that he opened up to malory. Maybe he's not used to being able to rely on someone else. Maybe he just barely misses stepping on a bee and it's too much - years of fear and anxiety and uncertainty and being the only person who knows and believes what happened and honestly sometimes that latter one is harder to convince himself is true, but he nearly just made a repeat and malory is looking at him funny and no no he can't be weak, he can't show this affects him anymore, he has a reputation to uphold - but he's only 14. 15. He's a kid, and thats a lot of emotions and trauma to hold and press down, and he's been so fixated on this for years that his anxiety over his dear death (what COULD have happened), the stress, and the memory of what DID happen all conflates and suddenly he's relieving it, as if he had died.

Malory is alarmed of course and tries to help but what can he do? What can gansey do? And when it's over gansey cannot stand the looks he gets and the knowledge that malory saw his mask (survival mechanism) break that he feels crushed, and so he flees, and distance makes it easier to breathe

And life goes on. Gansey spends YEARS of his adolescence pretending he'd okay and he's got it down to an ART. He dates girls all over the world because his parents kept asking if he has a girlfriend yet. They never last long. He has a long distance once when he moves to Henrietta but when life gets too much, and he never really cared that much for her anyway, he breaks it off because it's easier.

And this is all just an expansion on what you've been saying so far but now I want to draw attention to that one part in trb (forgive me, I do not have my books with me so I can't quote) where gansey talks about how "his friends kept walking away from him, but he could never seem to walk away from them"

THAT gets me because - that's a 180. He's spent his life running from people. Making connections and leaving them easily. Ronan Adam and Noah are so important to him because not only did they believe him about magic, they believed him about his death (maybe it was a little harder for Adam. Maybe Adam was jealous of this second chance, because he knew that if he fucked up and his dad killed him for real, there'd be no second chances. But that's a story for another day. And I don't think hed let it show. Even if gansey is more intuitive (and anxious) than anyone knows. But it doesn't matter) and they take it as truth, simple. But what happened, in those early months, to win these boys gansey's loyalty to such a degree that he could sell his home to help them? That he would choose again and again to follow THEM (as well), to keep walking back to them when they push him away, to make him willing to die again for real for them? That he CANT BRING HIMSELF to leave, when every time before then, gansey had fled? Packed up and moved on?

And what about all the evidence that gansey's self esteem is in the gutter, but his self confidence is so pristine that no one notices that he thinks his life is worthless? That he has to prove he deserves to be alive? That he believes he DIDNT (maybe DOESNT) deserve his second chance? That he thinks he has no right to ever be upset, afraid, angry, self-pitting, depressed, traumatised? That he has no right to need help, let alone ask for it, because he has been taught to do everything himself (and isnt that just a fun house mirror to adam. Same issue, different expression. Richard gansey, army of one, oh so slowly learning that that doesnt need to be the case. But ganse, that doesnt mean you have to be the general), and in fact he has a RESPONSIBILITY to helping others? What about the fact that he doesn't think his friends would love him as much as he does them, because why would they? He's done the bare minimum. What about the fact that he doesn't think he deserves his friends, so he's blind to the loyalty they have to him? He feels like they're all walking away, but "if They (gansey) die, I (ronan) die too" "then you've killed him (ronan), Adam thought (at the prospect of taking ronan away from gansey). Adam giving up his wish for a future from glendower immediately when he realizes gansey will die. The fact that Adam, in his pov, never wants to walk away from gansey. He only wants to stand beside him, not behind him.

But gansey can't see any of this, because he doesn't know to look

And another thing that gets me is that - gansey has more masks than the Happy Mask Salesman from Majora's Mask, because he's had to shove himself so deep down and dark just to function and be accepted. But he so, so desperately wants to be known. There's so much evidence for it, but lemme list the ones I have off the top of my head:

Blue returns the journal to gansey, and it fits so perfectly in his hands, and he opens it and wants blue to see they're long acquainted, him and the journal, and he wants to show her that "this is the real me" (TRB)

When gansey goes to visit his parents, he contemplates how the Camero makes him feel on the outside how he feels on the inside. Despite all the layers, gansey wants to be himself, and he wants to show that to people. The car is an extension of that desire (TRB)

In this same scene, Gansey thinks about when he got the care and his dad said "why did he even want that car?" And his mom replied "oh, I know why." Gansey fixated on this, and even all this time later wants to ask her what she meant. Because she said something that meant she knew the real gansey, and he wants to know what that was

I think we all remember that scene in TRK when Gansey is talking to Henry in the hole, and Gansey contemplates what "gansey-like" was. How everyone thought they knew but he was always disappointed because it was surface level stuff. How delighted he was when Henry said secrets and was right, he had actually seen Gansey, and knew what gansey like was

And then at the party, I don't have any actual quotes for this but I could have sworn there was a passage where gansey muses that he felt strangely known by the Vancouver crowd

And the final point I want to bring to attention is that gansey build these masks because he had to, because no one wanted to see the broken and messy bits of gansey. But again and again, blue is the opposite. She outright hates gansey's masks. She really only starts to like him when she sees moments of genuine joy and enthusiasm in him, when he's being sincere or serious. When he starts to peel back his masks for her. How when she saw him afraid, he seemed more real to her. How she fell in love with him, just a bit, when she saw his ghost on the leyline, stripped of all pretence. How her favourite gansey is the quiet one late at night, on phone calls and phone rides, where he stops needing to pretend. That one scene in TRB, after Adam and gansey fought, and blue tells him about malory's failed ritual, and gansey makes a snarky comment and dismisses it with "ignore me, I'm being self-pitying" (which I don't think I need to comment on at this point). Blue replies '"you are being self pitying." But blue kind of liked him better that way'

Idk the fact that blue loves gansey most for the parts of himself he shut away because he'd been taught they weren't acceptable, that no one wanted to see them, that he had no right to have them let alone show them, but he is tired of masks and just wants to be known and understood, and here is blue (and noah and adam and ronan, though those are to different extents/directions) who loves him more for those parts. They're perfect for each other your honour

I'm done now but I told you I'm mentally ill for this boy. My son. My blorbo. I could say so much more about him but I'm tired now so this will have to suffice. I'm always thinking about him. He devastates me

so i'm rereading trc with my friend and we're currently on bllb and i just read chapter 30 and in it blue's asking malory what gansey used to be like before he moved to henrietta and the gansey that malory describes to blue is so different from the gansey she currently knows and i just cant stop thinking about it.

first off, malory describes gansey as "small" as in not just his height but as in gansey was young and it makes sense because at the time gansey was 15 but it just kind of does something to my heart when i think about young, small gansey trying to figure out why he's still alive.

malory then goes on to say, "He was still trying to prove that he hadn't just hallucinated. He was still quite obsessed with the event [his death] itself." gansey first died when he was 10 and to be obsessing over your death for FIVE years trying to convince others but mostly yourself that you didn't make it up that you actually died and not some part of a childs imagination it must've fucked with him so bad???

then malory tells blue exactly how obsessed gansey was with his death and was to the extent that he was always drawing bees and hornets and "Got screaming nightmares over it- he had to get his own place since I couldn't sleep with it [...] Sometimes these fits would happen in the day, too. We'd just be toddling through some riding path in Leicestershire and next thing I knew he'd be on the ground clawing his face like a mental patient." the gansey that blue currently knows doesnt act like that but this was only two years prior its fucking INSANE and it's here blue starts to think about the facade gansey had learned to throw up since he was a kid.

AND IT GETS WORSE SOMEHOW?? earlier in bllb in chapter 3, gansey talks about how he felt like running and how it had been a long time since he had felt that way. at the time it didn't make sense like wdym by that gansey but then back in chapter 30 malory tells blue how gansey just disappeared one day. left most of his bags and left without a word to anyone not even his family who then called malory to ask for gasneys whereabouts. "He picked himself up and moved on so easily, so quickly. He had done it so many times before England, Jane, and it was old hat to him."

it makes blue rethink every conversation she had with gansey previously, similarly to when adam heard gansey's voice of fear in the cave in chapter one where gansey had the panic attack because its around this book where the gangsey start to figure, as blue puts it, "It was more like the Gansey she'd seen was a partial truth."

it's so very easy to pass off ganseys insecurities and his feelings about how he should comfort other people but they shouldn't do the same for him because he's had it the easiest (his words not mine) because he himself skips over it so fast. like he'll mention something and then act like he's never thought or said it, like its something normal which really isnt and then it slowly makes sense that gansey throughout the series, starts to lose that mask (there's multiple masks but thats a conversation for another time) and the readers and the gangsey get to see what the real gansey is like instead of the bulletproof, untouchable gansey they're used to seeing.

the idea of gansey running is insane in a good way because its nothing like the gansey we know, plus paired with the fact about how young gansey has me clawing at the walls because he's just this kid desperate to prove he wasn't hallucinating, trying to find some purpose to his life before he finds it in henrietta. a kid who was still terrified of his death who relived it, screaming every night who still had panic attacks anywhere and everywhere and would end up clawing at himself because there's hornets everywhere. a kid who doesn't stay in one place too long who learns to put on an easy smile to convince everyone okay and gets so good at it that it works and people think that hes normal and okay when he's anything but.

idk pre canon gansey is something that i need to inject into my bloodstream and analyse in a lab.