Do you ever long for the Dreamer Trilogy that could have been? If the publisher let Maggie do what she wanted? Like she said the whole moderator thing was not the plan. What was?? Ache for what would have happened if people hadn't been so weird and horrible about Adam for years to that point that she doesn't even want to mention his name? If people hadn't posted her address online and went to her house to yell at her over how she wrote TRC? I do, every single day

it’s like mstiefvater cracked my head open to write this

i love (almost) all of them <3

magic is about intention. so are conversations.

something i’ve been thinking about a lot lately is the way that language in the dreamer trilogy & the raven cycle is a barrier to forming connection/community.

in the raven cycle we see a distinct lack of specific terms used between ronan and kavinsky. the word “dreamer” is not even used directly — instead the two of them talk conceptually about the dreaming process, about their respective “special places” (ronan’s being cabeswater), and how the dreaming “juice” runs out (but again, the terms “ley line” or “energy” are not used). there is a clear recognition of “sameness” or shared experiences between the boys, with kavinsky specifically saying he “knows what ronan is” (tho whether he’s referring to dreaming or ronan’s sexuality is up for debate i suppose).

this is really the first time ronan is connecting with a dreamer outside of his family. and his family, of course, has their own terms and language for dreaming. there is a barrier in the discussions ronan and kavinsky are having because of a lack of shared language. so much of what they experience as dreamers is isolated in the individual, so they are forced to talk around concepts because they don’t have universal terminology to fall back on.

i’ve talked extensively about how dreaming is a representation of chronic illness in the dreamer trilogy so i won’t go too far down that rabbit hole. But. something that is talked about within the disability/chronic illness community (and beyond) is the way that individuals can struggle to connect with people that have the same condition/similar experiences as them because of a lack of shared terminology to discuss abstract or hyper-specific concepts/feelings.

we see this in the raven cycle with kavinsky and ronan, and then we start to see it even more in the dreamer trilogy as ronan continues to find belonging and community with other dreamers. ronan and hennessy’s friendship requires them to bridge the language gap. though they both live as dreamers, because of their different experiences throughout their lives, they use different terminology to make meaning of their situation.

in knowing to one another, ronan and hennessy are exposing each other to new, shareable language. ronan shares his term for “nightwash,” and hennessy shares her term for “the lace.” both of them adapt to using this new language for a shared conceptual experience and in doing so are able to connect more fully with one another. in the raven king, i believe it is quite possible that ronan and adam had encountered the lace — a dark entity that whispered their worst fears to them — but did not have the term yet to describe it. obviously, terminology does not outweigh experience, but it is an important element of forming community through shared experience.

there’s also the way that the moderators use the term “zed” instead of “dreamer” — at first it is unclear what zeds even are because as the reader we have only ever had the language provided by ronan. in this experience of coming to realize that “zeds” are equivalent to “dreamers,” we as the reader experience the same sort of dissonance that dreamers themselves experience when trying to connect with one another without universal/shared language.

for ronan specifically, in both trc and tdt, there’s always an element of translation. in the dreaming world, his dreams speak in either latin or a dream language that doesn’t exist in the waking world. in his dreams ronan understands the dream language, but outside of them he can’t. ronan working so hard to learn latin is intentional — by understanding it in and outside of his dreams, he can bridge a language gap for himself; can understand his waking world AND his dreaming world at once. he studies it like his life depends on it because. it. does. the puzzle box is also helpful to ronan because it makes something that is unreal in the waking world, real — it is confirmation of the validity of that language. whether you’re thinking of dreaming as a metaphor for chronic illness, mental illness, or some other identity, the point is about the feeling of otherness, of inability. ronan only feels strange & lost & like he doesn’t know what the hell he is outside of his dreams where no one else understands his language. where he is confronted by being unable to speak to what he lives in his head.

in conclusion:

ronan lynch i love you.

am i the only one who forgot that declan and ronan just. beat the shit out of each other in trc. frequently. like that was a thing that happened

he liked how he looked on her arm etc etc

He and his brother never hugged 😪

don’t post to other sites

Greywaren (2022)

Most unrealistic part of the Dreamer Trilogy is that Ronan Lynch, first-generation Irish-American, never ONCE gives any shit to or even lightly ribs Hennessy for being British

declan and his experience as a guardian, a young parent

my wip//only when i by alice phoebe lou

the transition from the raven cycle to the dreamer trilogy captures the transition from being a teenager to being an adult so perfectly i can’t stand it. everything in trc is so big, everything means so much, they are all so in love with each other & fall into friendship so easily. and everything in tdt is so much smaller, so much more trust is required to make real relationships, everything falls apart so easily but there’s also so much raw intimacy. and it’s all just like living this too small too big life that is growing and changing. and it is so painful to have grown up with these characters and for them to now be stuck at one stage in life while i have to continue on.

Ronan und Chainsaw

kavinsky may have died in the dream thieves but you cannot convince me that his presence and memory didn't shape ronan's "ecoterrorism driven by my own subconscious" plotline in the dreamer trilogy. he would have loved that shit. u never forget ur worst and whatnot

JORDAN X HENNESSY, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM.

Unidentified photographer. Photograph of Madame X as exhibited at the 1884 Salon. / Pierre Verdy/AFP via Getty. Naomi Campbell for Chanel 1997 S/S HC - Hysterical Elegance. / John Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925). Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau), 1883-84.