finished greywaren.

sorry that im constantly thinking abt ronan beating adams dads ass do yall still think im cool

Im gonna make my single negative post about Greywaren...

I do think Greywaren suffered from Maggie kind of just wanting to be done with it. I am satisfied with Ronan/Adam's relationship personally (they got theirs) and Hennessey's arc, but otherwise it was the least successful book I think in terms of doing what I love about a Raven Cycle book. The character interactions that we got were good but a lot of it felt sparse. Unlike in The Raven King where I loved the parts that were left open or unexplained (I know this is kind of an unpopular opinion), in Greywaren it felt more skipped over than intentionally open ended and for me and quite a few things feel less fun to speculate on unlike TRK. The Lynch brothers needed more page time together, especially to reckon with all the new information we got. Mor didn't quite work for me, she was to amorphous, why is she at the barns. They kinda forgot about the question of Aurora. Declan's needed to find more of a middle ground. Ronan needed more pov time at the end. Maggie is only human and it's obvious online highly effected her writing of this book. it's mostly just too bad. I don't want to be overly negative about it or sound like I didn't like the book because I did really enjoy it and loved a lot of what we got but, yeah.

I'm just gonna try and hc around what didn't work for me and imagine all their futures sentimental and mushy going forward! :')

randomly remembered the fandom wide disappointment after mister impossible came out and started laughing bc what was that even about. every single post i saw from somebody who didn't like the book was like 'but what about adam' and don't get me wrong i love adam he's my favourite but also why did people expect him to be there? he is not the main character of the trilogy. ronan and hennessy are. but then again there were also some people on the other end of the spectrum who were like 'oh but the book totally sufered middle book syndrome and the plot didn't progress at all in a meaningful way, adam's two minute appearance was the only saving grace' and my dudes. my guys. what

obsessed with aftg blogs hating trc and saying the foxes wouldn’t get along with the raven boys

are we... supposed to be sad by that? the guy who drugged his own love interest and continuously beats him wouldn’t like our favorite characters? aw :(

someone explain to me why i am so defensive over adam parrish, like I have a personal very very long list of complaints about him as a person and character and yet anytime i hear someone else breathe in the direction of calling him awful or annoying, some knee jerk response in my bones starts internally screeching “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP YOU DON’T GET IT NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO HAVE AN OPINION ABOUT HIM OTHER THEN ME”

okay but why is maggie replying to trc fans on twitter when she said she doesn’t want to talk about trc anymore 🤨 like just move on since you’ve made it very clear that you’re done with this universe

Pardon my first post but we, as a community, do NOT talk about this scene enough.

THIS.

THIS. THIS.

I cannot possibly express how much I loved this one little scene. I think it really set the stage for a relationship between Adam and Ronan, as well as the difference between the way Gansey and Adam handle Ronan.

Firstly, no shade to my man Gansey, love him and his weird little king crush, but I think this scene highlighted perfectly what kind of puts him at odds with Ronan and Adam. In my opinion, Gansey seems to have a “fix it” sort of mindset. Not that he’d ever consider his friends broken or in need of repair, but he doesn’t like it when bad things happen to them or they engage in self destructive behavior. He wants to fix it because he cares about them, understandably so.

When Gansey sees Ronan punching the wall, he’s quick to intervene and set him “straight”. He wants to fix the situation, make sure Ronan doesn’t hurt himself or do something destructive. He gets a little snarky with Adam for his lack of action, but Adam just simply answers that he isn’t the one who can kill Ronan’s demons. This is a very key difference between Adam and Gansey’s character right here that I think is often overlooked.

We all know Gansey is like the mom friend, he tries to keep the peace and keep everyone in line, and subsequently feels a lot of guilt when something happens to them. They are his responsibility because he loves them so deeply. This certainly has its benefits with someone like Ronan, who needs who’s levelheaded and composed when he isn’t. Both Gansey and Adam generally fill that role for him, but it’s the way that they do it that just GETS me.

Adam doesn’t stop Ronan from punching that wall not because he doesn’t care, but because he understands it in a way that Gansey doesn’t. Adam lets Ronan take out his frustrations because it’s not his job to stop him. Ronan has demons, he has gone through horrible things and the things that surface because of that aren’t always pretty, but Adam doesn’t try and fix those things. He lets Ronan punch the wall because he understands needing to do it. Everyone has their own demons, and only Ronan can overcome his own. It’s not anyone else’s place to try and do it for him, which I think Gansey unknowingly attempts to do for all of his friends.

This isn’t to say Gansey’s way of handling it was wrong or that Ronan should be allowed to just go and do whatever destructive thing, nor is it to say that one method of handling the situation was better than the other. Ronan very clearly needs BOTH Adam and Gansey when he experiences those lows. Adam allows him to express what he feels, and Gansey keeps him from going too far with it. I just love this little scene that pinpoints that key difference between Adam and Gansey.

I could also use his and Adam’s constant fights and bickering regarding Gansey’s insistence on always fixing things, but I will probably do that in another post...

thinking about that scene in trb where adam comes out of ninos and he's got a silly spongebob ball that he bounces on the ground and then steps out just in time to catch it in his hand again. when he's sitting at foxway gently examining each and every tarot card. how his eyes flick to gansey as he says "i don't have a brother ma'am". how he locks eyes with ronan over his locker and says "with a dreamer". how he plays ronan's loud electronica for him at cabeswater. how he casually tells a man at the gas station his mama didn't teach him how to speak to women. how he gives blue a little show and tell of gansey's random artifacts. how he would let ronan come and sleep on the floor of his crappy apartment. how gansey picked him up from work and his overalls were rolled down to his waist. how he gave opal his watch. how he looked at ronan witheringly and told him to go do his homework. how he just went and peed in the fields by cabeswater. how he was flattered that gansey's sister found him attractive. how he sent blue flowers. how he looked at gansey and mouthed "yee haw" and they both laughed. how he messed about with ronan so often they had a whole grade system for parking lots, how he got embarrassed and shy when blue and noah found the silly mixtape ronan left for him. him riding his bike. him driving his little hand me down car. him cutting his own hair in choppy uneven mess. how he slept through his bday (my sweet little summer child) woke up downed some juice and went to go do some freak nature magic shit. how he dresses so dark academia with a tweed vest and rolled shirt sleeves when he gets to college. how he holds the back of ronan's head when he hugs him. how he rides a motorbike !!!!! how he tells declan he's done with ronan then comes back a few hours later with chainsaw in his hands. how he collects crying rich kids at college. how he does fake tarot card readings when he could do real ones (and then some) if he really wanted to. how he gets engaged before he gets his degree. how he finds his home is a person not a place. how he spends his teen years thinking he's unknowable only to find the love of his life and makes tamquam alter idem their i love you

just thinking about adam, adam, adam

okay so, i just reread the Opal short story for the first time in a while and bizarrely i feel like........Opal = Declan?? in a way???

hear me out

^ Declan fearing and resenting dreams but also craving the beauty of them that he's never really been allowed to engage in fully as someone neither dreamer nor dreamt, born of dreams but traumatized by them

^ growing up watching his dad's and Ronan's dreams, cleaning up their dreams, knowing how dangerous and volatile Ronan's dreams in particular can be but never sure when they will be, always on the alert and waiting for the next disaster

^ Declan going into politics, fitting his life into rigid forms, canonically craving structure to cope with a stressfully disordered dream-riddled childhood

^ and isn't this, like, Declan's whole TDT arc? understanding that he'd let his trauma get in the way of appreciating the good parts of his childhood and his family? accepting dreams back into his life with wonder instead of fear, returning to the Barns and making it his home again?

i know that Opal is a manifestation of Ronan's subconscious, and i know she's paralleled in TRK with Adam, and this may all be a stunning display of my brainrot but i was honestly NOT expecting to reread this story and come to this conclusion, and yet here i am.

am i actually crazy or do y'all feel me here??

you know what i'm gonna say it. i think adam parrish and ronan lynch should have a horrible drawn out divorce where they hate each other but can't quite quit each other. i think that's much more engaging than any sort of bullshit happily ever after.

hi are there any trc fics you would recommend? (saw your tags on that one fandoms with good fic post)

ohhhhh tumblr user after my own heart...

First of all, some of my thoughts on the subject. I love fanfiction -- both as a phenomenon and as a genre of writing. I have a deep and sincere appreciation for the earnest engagement with media it fosters, the creative potential it holds, and the way it can be truly and deeply bad. This being said, what I think makes a fic good is different from what makes a book or a movie good. To me, a good piece of fanfiction is simultaneously a story and a piece of analysis. It should respond to the work it's based on, even (or perhaps, especially) to the detriment of its functionality as a standalone narrative.

This is all to say that the fics I'm recommending here rely heavily on knowledge of the books, and their main merit is in how they engage with the canon narrative. So bear that in mind.

TRC has a lot of fic in a variety of niches and tones. I will try to give you a diverse sampling. That being said, the vast majority of TRC fic that exists is Adam/Ronan (because fandoms are predictable like that) which means the recommendations here are slanted that way.

In no particular order:

Son of the Nuclear A-Bomb -- This is the fic I recommend most among this selection. A clear divergence from canon, it nevertheless extrapolates perfectly on existing themes, to the point that it straight-up predicted several plot points regarding Ronan's family in The Dreamer Trilogy. It's the TRC fic of all time.

Out for Re-henge -- Among TRC fics, there's a surprisingly substantial percentage that are, simply and exclusively, about Blue and Ronan having platonic bonding moments. It's just two teenagers having unmagnificent adventures. Like, as a distinct genre. I've never observed this in any other fandom. You can find more of these under the 'Ronan Lynch & Blue Sargent' relationship tag, with Gen checked as the work category. There's some real gems.

empire that runs on its own -- MIND THE TAGS. I said I'd give you diversity, so I'm giving you diversity. I hesitate to recommend this fic usually, as it can be unpleasant to read and has genuinely upsetting subject matter, but if I'm going to talk about how good TRC fic is, I have to pull out the big guns. It's genuinely incredible work. There's imagery and themes in this that still echo in my head, years after I first read it.

feels better biting down -- Everything by this author is incredible, but I enjoy this fic in particular because it's set in an unexplored bit of time before the series actually starts. It has a unique, lethargic tension that mimics the state of the characters' relationship at this point. It is almost pointedly unromantic, despite dealing with characters who we know have/will have a romantic dynamic during the events of the books.

my bones into your bones -- This fic frustrates me so much. It's incredibly emotionally intense, it has lines that are tattooed on the inside of my eyelids, and it's completely and unapologetically About People Fucking so I can't recommend it to anyone without paralyzing embarrassment. I skipped over this fic in the tag for like three years because of this, but eventually I decided to see what all the fuss was about, and gave it a try. When I tell you it's good, I mean that I felt like I'd been put through the fucking laundry.

Those are mostly pretty serious fics, so here's some light(er) runner-ups as palate-cleansers.

see you somewhere, someplace, sometime -- Ronan assholery, feat. Declan

Hey, Brother (PUNKBITCH) -- Ronan assholery, feat. Blue

in your manner of speaking -- Ronan assholery, feat. Adam (are you beginning to notice a pattern)

the pynch engagement was the most obvious thing possible, sorry if some of you are dumb, it was obvious that ronan would want to have a life forever with adam, this is implicit in the story and explicit in that bit of mister impossible where he imagines adam a widower, the whole question of future versus present. it has nothing to do with "fanfic", if you didn't notice it, that's your problem. these characters are coming of age and want to share a life together, and the engaged was the most pynch thing possible

i don't accept criticism of this, because it's clearly just cry from failed shippers

my favorite moment of adam being deaf being conveniently forgotten is that bit in cdth where he goes to visit ronan and he says he listened to his sociology notes on the ride down. he listened to sociology notes... on the highway... on a motorbike... through one ear. i'm not saying it's not possible i'm just saying if he keeps doing that he's gonna wreck or lose hearing in the other ear.

yeah…like hello?? and it Could have been interesting if she had meaningfully engaged with it in a way like. adam refusing to acknowledge his deafness bc it’s representative of the fact that he can never live up to his expectations for himself and then having to deconstruct all that. but no. he just lives like that 😭

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!