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theravenkin · 1 month

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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.

#i looove psychoanalyzing fictional characters mm mmm yummy #my fingers hurt from typing this #please know i know jack shit about psychology #but i read crimeronan's low empathy adam post before work and thought about this the entire shift #so now here we are #adam parrish #ronan lynch #pynch #character study #the raven cycle #adam parrish meta #ronan lynch meta #the raven cycle meta #the dreamer trilogy #trc #tdt

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nyacromancey · 11 months

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

#trc #the raven cycle #tdt #the dreamer trilogy #the dream thieves #ronan lynch #meta #greywaren

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iwowzumi · 2 years

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people can and should criticize greywaren cause there is definitely a lot to think critically about. i however will not be doing that because i’m a sucker and i love happy endings

#seen a lot of meta specifically about character arc resolutions and a certain….redemption arc #um these books are unfortunately too close to my heart so i’ve decided not to have thoughts about them #dreamer trilogy #greywaren spoilers #syd text

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piningeddiediaz · 2 years

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Hii, so a question about TDT. I read TRC years ago and loved it ofc, it's one of my favorite ya series and i still think about it regularly. Gansey and adam were my favs but i still looked forward to CDTH so much, but :( i ended up not liking it all that much. I didn't connect with the new characters the way i did with the gangsey, and i barely remember the plot, except that they drove around a lot, this one girl dreamed clones of herself and declan was there. MI is on my shelf but i've never read it. So, should i continue reading? Why/why not? Does it get "better" in MI? I want to love TDT, especially since i know the last book will be out this year but idk :/

Hi! I completely understand what you’re saying - personally, I felt the same way too. I didn’t (and maybe still don’t, though it got better with MI) connect with the new characters in the way I connected with the gangsey either. But i think that’s the point? the overall themes/message trc is very different to the ones in tdt. trc, at it’s core, was a story about friendship. yeah they searched for this dead welsh king together and in doing so went through these major personal developments, but in all the challenges they faced their strength came from their bonds with each other. the impact of trc hinged on us as the reader’s connecting with the characters and their relationships with each other, because it was those relationships that led to the development of each character. adam’s development in the books doesn’t hit until you take it in conjunction with his ability to accept his friends’ love, for example.

tdt is, i think, very different from that. it’s not an arthurian tale about friendship. it’s much darker, much sinister, because it’s about the struggles of someone who physically cannot fit in. magic is a metaphor for chronic illness, and the helplessness that ronan and hennessy feel in relation to their powers, matthew and jordan’s restlessness as they grapple with their lack of identity away from their dreamers, declan’s own conflict as he tries to protect his family but feels his facade slip away - the tone is completely different, and admittedly, it can be hard to get used to after the more hopeful tone of trc. it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s completely valid!

i can’t tell you if you should carry on, but i can tell you what made me stick to it. to me, this is a story about ronan, and i think mstief is telling a really compelling one. ronan ended trc in a place where he may have accepted himself, but he didnt understand himself. whilst everyone else had in some ways healed, ronan still hadn’t. he ended it with an understanding on his powers and love in the form of adam - and the main question of the series (and certainly of mi) was: is that enough for him? ronan is still on a journey of discovery, one that he had started in trc but hadnt finished there, and i needed to experience that journey with him. this series is about healing from the things you never thought you could escape, and i want to see ronan reach that point. declan was also a big selling point for me - i liked him since trb, and the best thing tdt did for me is finally show us the depths of declan! i didnt feel any connection to the new characters in cdth (tho that did change a bit in mi) but the story that is being told about the lynch brothers is the main thing i care about.

that was probably in far more detail than you wanted 😂 but in summary, i recommend maybe trying out mi and see if it helps? if it doesn’t, that’s completely fair bcos like i said, tdt deals with much more serious, darker themes than trc. but if you do try reading it, let me know what you think!

#hope this helped anon!#tdt meta #the dreamer trilogy #trc

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one-squash-one-end · 2 months

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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.

#y'all better like this it took a while #trc #the raven cycle #gansey #blue sargent #ronan lynch #adam parrish #noah czerny #henry cheng #the raven king #the raven boys #blue lily lily blue #the dream thieves #let's hope i don't forget about this after the first part #please talk to me about your thoughts

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crimeronan · 1 year

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as an Irish person reading trc/tdt what do you think of Maggies characterisation of the Lynch family??

oh i LOVE this question. anon so kindly giving me permission to infodump....

the short answer is: i love it?? i love it. i have varying quibbles about how niall's "redemption arc" is done and stuff like that, but purely on the irish side of things, i love it

further necessary context: i'm irish-american a few generations removed from ireland (who happens to have a hyperfixation on irish myth), my closest familial connections in the country are some distant cousins that my great-aunt traced recently. direct relations to her, but given that she is like 96, much less direct to me. so my perspective is very different from that of an irish person raised n living in ireland, & most of what i love most about the lynch family is directly related to diaspora and intergenerational trauma stuff

i said i was gonna infodump and then couldn't decide where to start. waow. okay so i've talked before about most of the worldbuilding in the dreamer trilogy being based in irish myth - ronan being from the otherworld (eldritch god, fairy, same thing), fintan mac bochra and the hawk of achill, not giving your true name/address to people at the fairy market, etc. these stories are woven through the whole fabric of the series

then the concept of irish storytelling itself is Also woven through the whole series, on both a meta and in-canon level

traditional irish storytellers will take a myth and make it their own, you can trace the origins of different tales back dozens or hundreds of years. the goal isn't to tell the story the way it's been told in generations past, but instead to tell it how You'd tell it. so there are these books repurposing irish myth in this unique way, but also these characters who are all so in love with storytelling in their own ways

you can see it in how niall and aurora tell their stories, how niall's always have a focus on action and tragedy and grisly death while aurora's are more focused on the love and the feelings and the soft fade-out of a tragic hero

you can see it in how declan has inherited niall's propensity for storytelling (the twitter confirmation of his middle name being "tadhg" still makes me Big Eyes Emoji) and also inherited niall's propensity for reckless idiocy, Geis Of Bullshit indeed.

then there's the way that declan and ronan both find themselves playing out different parts of niall's worst traits, how intergenerational trauma seems inescapable, how every damn person in the family is So Mentally Ill. this isn't necessarily the case for every irish-american family but it sure is for kitkat's. hoo boy we love giving chronic pain, psychosis, and inescapable depression to our offspring

that greywaren quote about "diaspora always idealizes the homeland" has stuck with me for a while because there's this kind of muted longing in the books' depiction of ireland itself, but also in the books' depiction of the barns, a place that niall and mór Made ronan's homeland. and more than that i see it in declan's views on his parents themselves, how he's able to reconcile with mór Because she's so distant and unfathomable and never personally fucked him up, so it's easier to forgive and forget everything she's done... how niall is dead and gone and can no longer change his behavior or grow or learn or fuck declan up any worse, so it's easier to accept his love as uncomplicated and good. child idealizing his distant homeland because that's what he's Supposed to have

truly don't know if that was the authorial intention but. it's the only way declan's arc makes any sense to me. that one line does a shitload of heavy lifting

and on a less theme-heavy note i love little details like. the brothers being so in touch with irish culture as second-gen immigrant kids, love that they play the uilleann pipes and attend the fleadh, love that ronan can do an irish accent on command, love that declan keeps photos of ireland in his bedroom but they still don't quite reflect his True Self like his attic does, love that mór is a gaelgeoir (irish speaker), there are other details i'm forgetting now

this post is ungodly long so i'll leave it here. these r my thoughts. it's good shit o/

#replies #trc #cdth #greywaren #greywaren spoilers #greywaren meta #cdth meta #kitkat learns gaeilge #<-only tangentially related but.

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earthwoken · 1 year

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# EARTHWOKEN : an independent , highly selective & mutually exclusive portrayal of ADAM PARRISH from the raven cycle & the dreamer trilogy . written by sofi , 23 , she / her . minors & personals dni.

rules under the cut.

activity.

this blog will be medium to low activity. i can be very slow to reply at times, and i won’t reply in chronological order, but according to my inspiration. please don’t pressure me for replies. i won’t always reply to memes or write all the starters from my starter calls, simply because i don’t always have the time / inspiration. will also drop threads if i’ve had them for too long on my drafts and i’m not feeling inspired to reply. it’s important for me to remember this is a hobby and not a job. however, if we are mutuals then it means i want to interact with you, but sometimes inspiration doesn’t cooperate. we can always plot another thread or you can send me another meme ! <3

following.

this blog is highly selective & mutuals only. it will take me some time before following back, because i like to check out blogs thoroughly before doing so. if i don’t wish to follow back, i will sometimes softblock. this is due to past experiences of non-mutuals interacting with my posts. also, if you’re following me, please make sure it’s because you actually want us to interact ! i’m good at taking the initiative and will usually like starter calls, meme calls and send memes to my new mutuals, but it’s appreciated when the interest is mutual.

shipping.

i am open to romantic shipping depending on chemistry between the muses. adam is bisexual. his feelings for ronan will be acknowledged but that doesn't mean you have to ship with me.

nsfw content.

triggers will be tagged : “tw: trigger”. you’re always welcomed to ask me to tag anything as a trigger warning, i want my blog to be a safe space for everyone. i ask that you tag any mention of disordered eating and that you refrain from mentioning it to me if we are ever plotting and your character suffers from it. nsfw threads will be scarce ( if there’s any at all ) i’m usually not comfortable writing these type of threads, unless we’re very close and i’m comfortable with you.

formatting.

i format my replies a bit. please never feel pressured to match my formatting, if i follow you, it’s because i’m interested in writing with you. i don’t really care that much about aesthetics. if you need me to change anything about my formatting for legibility reasons, please never hesitate to ask.

rp etiquette.

general rp etiquette applies. no god-modding, power-playing, meta-gaming, etc. don’t be a dick and please respect my rules. let’s always interact from a place of mutual respect !

duplicates.

i don’t mind them at all. the way i see it, if we have the same muse it means we have something in common that we can talk about. that being said, i understand not everyone feels the same and i will be hesitant to follow first. if you're okay with duplicates, feel free to follow and let's be friends !

do not interact.

if you’re a minor, personal blog, or if you ship with characters that are abusive / racist / problematic in general. do not interact with my posts if we’re not mutuals. this makes me incredibly uncomfortable and i will hardblock.

about me.

hi! my name is sofi, i’m 22 years old and from chile. my first language is not english, so feel free to let me know if i ever make any grammatical mistakes. my discord is available for mutuals upon request. thank you for taking the time to read my rules and feel free to send me memes whenever !! <3

credits.

psd by ariapsds.

#pinned.#dni with this post.

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northisnotup · 2 years

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Sometimes you just gotta listen to The Amazing Devil and think deeply about the Lynch family as a whole...

#welly boots and the lynch brothers wrecking grief #because the thing is - Niall's death changed Declan as much as it changed Ronan #they were friends - they were brothers - they were sons #and now they are that in amazing horrifying new ways #neither of them would recognize or treat kindly their past selves #and speaking of - the horror and the wild about declan and ronans connection to dreams #remember me i say remember me i sing - give me back my heart you wingless thing #the dreamer trilogy meta #the dreamer trilogy

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astudyinfreewill · 3 years

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The Ley Theory

or, “50 shades of Ley”: Real canon facts on what is actually going on with "Ronan N. Lynch"

brought to you by The Crying Club™️

A/N: Maggie if you're seeing this no you aren’t <3

---

It all started - as many things do - with a catholicism joke in the crying club discord server.

At that point, Mister Impossible (or as we affectionately call it, Miss Imp) had only been out a couple weeks, and we were all pretty bowled over, and wildly speculating about backstories. One of these speculations included wondering, if the sky book was the first dream Ronan remembers, what was Ronan’s very first dream?

A wise Parrishwife, at the time still blissfully unburdened with what has become known as The Ley Theory, once said: "what if his first dream is….. himself?” aka Ronan dreaming himself into life via Aurora, à la immaculate conception. Maggiekin out, Jesuskin in.

This innocent joke about Ronan being Jesus-adjacent, however, planted the seed of what would become a full blown theory.

Before we get into that though, let's revisit The Dream Thieves. Remember when Cabeswater said that there are many thieves, but only one Greywaren? Yeah.

This led us to wondering: “Why is Ronan not a thief? Is he just taking back from part of himself? Is he some kind of ley line entity?”

What the damn hell is a Greywaren even??? Does anyone have an idea what Greywaren actually is? Of course Ronan needed his I'm not like other girls dreamers moment, but why do we still not know what exactly a Greywaren is and how it relates to the ley lines, its forests and beings?

Could it be that Cabeswater is so enamoured with the Greywaren because the Greywaren is what sustains it?

Oh. Right. That's literally canon.

Thus, without further ado, the thesis statement:

RONAN IS A WHOLE ASS LEY LINE

…. and the hypotheses:

Greywaren (aka "Ronan") is actually a ley line and/or an ancient magical forest.

Greywaren dreamt (manifested) itself in the shape of Ronan Lynch.

Let's backtrack a bit and review the evidence, shall we?

(A/N: we DID make a powerpoint and present it on a zoom panel. It was 55 slides long and was called - you guessed it - “50 Slides of Ley”, because we are DELIGHTFUL <3)

PART 1: YOU ARE MADE OF DREAMS AND THIS WORLD IS NOT FOR YOU

Ronan being Greywaren aka a ley energy being might seem like a stretch at first, but actually, it makes a whole lot of pieces click into place.

So we all remember how Hennessy did a reverse Adam and put the ley line to sleep in MI, causing dreams all over the state to fall asleep (Bryde has a sweetmetal, so he awakens despite the ley line being completely zapped out; Jordan presumably created her own sweetmetal and she's awake by the end of the book; Matthew doesn't have a sweetmetal and he falls asleep, as do some of the Moderators). Ronan is (allegedly) not a dream, and he was asleep dreaming himself, but once Hennessy zaps the line, he doesn’t wake up. Why?

One option could be that Ronan is a dream himself, but if that were the case, the one person who could have dreamt him was Niall, and Niall’s been dead a long time. This doesn’t track. However, there’s another option here: Hennessy didn't stop Ronan's energy source. She stopped him. In other words: Ronan is the Virginia ley line, and he just got de-powered/put to sleep by Hennessy.

This, incidentally, would give a whole new meaning to Bryde’s insistence that “there are not two of you”. At first, we all interpreted it as Bryde being woefully wrong - yes there are two of Ronan, he can be both human and magical, shut up Bryce! And, well… that could still be true (more on that later). But what if, on a very base level, Bryde was right? What if Ronan has never been fully human in the first place? What if he was a ley line all along?

Remember, as well, that Bryde is A) Lindenmere made human (“dangerous things can protect themselves”) in the shape of the mentor figure Ronan needs, and B) Ronan himself, or at least a manifestation of his subconscious. But what exactly is Ronan's subconscious?

Bryde also says to Hennessy that he is “older than Ronan imagines”. Now, this could (and likely does) mean that he’s as old as Lindenmere. But there’s another layer here, because later, Hennessy thinks of that same phrasing - older than he imagines - about Ronan himself:

So… what if the implication here is that Ronan himself is much older than Ronan imagines? What if he’s not actually 19 at all, but an ancient sentient magical entity?

Yet more evidence from Mister Impossible: Bryde keeps trying to get Ronan to feel the presence of the ley line, but Ronan can’t until the very end, while we know that other dreamers (Hennessy) and psychics (Adam, Maura, Persephone) can feel it easily. Why is that? Simple: because Ronan is the ley line. How do you feel something is always in you and around you? How do you feel something that is simply a part of yourself? That would be like a human being acutely feeling the presence of their limbs - it’s not something we do, we’d have to actively make a conscious effort.

At the end of the book, however, Ronan can finally feel the ley line, and Bryde is ecstatic. This is because he views this as Ronan getting in touch with a lost part of himself, finally gaining awareness of his power and who/what he is. This is a direct parallel with the continuous efforts to remove energy blockages from the ley lines so they can flow freely and regain full power again.

If we follow this theory, then Bryde’s continuous “us vs them” rhetoric is more than simply shitty cult tactics to isolate him from his support network (though it is that too). His insistence on Ronan being a different species than anyone else (e.g. wolves vs humans) is quite literal: he wants Ronan to realise that he is in fact completely other, and he made himself human as a conscious decision:

Ronan wants his world to be smaller because he made himself human shaped. And in fact, Maggie told us this at the very start of the book:

Something that lay / in the shape of a man. The same way Ronan thinks of Cabeswater/Lindenmere as wearing a “forest shaped suit”, he himself is simply wearing a human shaped suit.

But the evidence for this theory doesn’t stop at Mister Impossible. In fact, looking back, we found several clues pointing to this as far back as The Raven Cycle:

Ronan is the only dreamer who can speak the language of dreams (and of Cabeswater/Opal/etc); neither Kavinsky nor Niall nor Hennessy are able to. That’s because it is in fact his native language - the ley line language.

However, he can’t speak the dream language when he’s awake, because in waking life, burdened with his human consciousness, he does not realise he’s a ley line - similar to how he cannot feel the ley line in Mister Impossible. There aren’t two of Ronan, but Ronan has somehow made himself two (again, very Jesus-adjacent in that “God making himself human” way… I know I know more Catholicism jokes but LISTEN THE EVIDENCE SUPPORTS IT)

More evidence in the shape of off-handed, throwaway foreshadowing: in The Raven King, we find out Blue is literally half tree. And if Ronan himself is a forest… well. That would certainly make them “the same impossible stuff” (it also means Adam’s type is literally trees but that’s a different story).

Okay, let’s talk about the Nightwash. Ronan gets worse Nightwash, it seems, than any other dreamer, when he’s away from the ley line. He gets it more quickly, more often, and more severely. Why? Well, at a first glance, it may seem like he just has Protagonist Problems. But think back: when was the first time we saw anything similar to the thick black ooze of the Nightwash? Yep, that’s right: The Raven King, while the demon is unmaking Ronan.

● Think about that word, “unmaking”. Ronan being away from the ley line results in, essentially, Ronan himself being unmade. That’s because he’s part of the ley line, and being away from it is something akin to dismemberment. To unmaking. In other words: “You are made of dreams, and this world is not for you.”)

PART 2: KING AND SHEPHERD BOTH

So, if Ronan is an ancient ley line forest, or indeed a whole-ass ley line, how did he come to to be connected with Niall Lynch? They key to all that is in the part of Miss Imp where we meet Ilidorin. For some reason, during our first frantic reading, we all kind of assumed Ilidorin was the name of the forest that got cut down.

But that’s not accurate: Ilidorin is the name of just that one tree.

In fact, when Ronan asks Bryde for the name of the forest, Bryde - who is visibly pleased with the question - replies “This tree’s name is Ilidorin”. Now, why would Bryde avoid answering the question… unless the answer is a Big McHuge Spoiler?

Here’s what we do know about the forest:

Ilidorin’s forest was like Lindenmere, but belonged to a different dreamer.

Its dreamer died “not long ago”

After the dreamer died, there was no one to protect the forest

However, the ley line of that forest is “pure, quiet, strong”, and “if that dam didn’t exist, it would be perfect”

Additionally: Ronan thinks that Ilidorin is a name that sounds like “it belongs with Greywaren”.

Can you tell where this is going?

THESIS: Greywaren was the ley line forest Ilidorin belonged to… and it was dreamt by Niall.

According to this thesis, then Greywaren was Niall’s forest in the same way that Cabeswater, and later Lindenmere, are Ronan’s. When Niall died, there was no one to protect his dream forest (nor, arguably, his children). What is a forest without its dreamer? Cabeswater was being unmade at the same time Ronan was; and so, perhaps, the true essence of Greywaren fell dormant when Niall died, and the forest was destroyed except for Ilidorin.

However, there is an extra step here. Something that makes (the) Greywaren more special than either Cabeswater or Lindenmere. It’s entirely possible that Ronan is not “just” the ley line forest of Greywaren, but the very core of the ley line that gives it life. In the excerpt above, Bryde refers to Ilidorin as being “old and hard of hearing”. Which leads us to this:

The dreams - the forests - are supposed to hear Ronan. Without Ronan, there are no dream forests. Why does Bryde, in his rallying of dreamers, constantly emphasise that Ronan is the most important? Well, because Ronan is the Greywaren: king and shepherd. Whatever dream energy is made of, Ronan is the lynchpin (ha ha).

To add to the mindfuckery, Bryde is a manifestation of Ronan, so his mission is both Lindenmere’s and Ronan’s mission: almost as if Ronan himself subconsciously knew his mission is to protect magic and the ley line forests.

Of course, Ronan’s mission at the start was simply to protect himself from NIghtwash and the moderators… but turns out those two goals might just be the same:

The first step to saving the ley lines, is to save Ilidorin’s ley line. Which means, to save Greywaren’s ley line; to save the Greywaren; to save Ronan.

Ronan, the Greywaren, is the shepherd of ley lines, and as a ley line himself, he is pure and strong… or he would be, if it weren’t for that pesky dam. Which, yes, means the literal dam blocking the ley line of course, but also… Ronan’s humanity. According to Bryde, the human shape that Ronan chose to inhabit - his human family, his human lover - is what is blocking him from remembering himself and be pure and strong. That’s why Bryde tries his best to isolate Ronan from Declan and Adam, his two truest connections to humanity (Matthew being a dream, and Ronan’s two other friends being out of the picture).

In the excerpt above, Bryde says that Ilidorin might help Ronan remember what he wants. Or, at least, what Bryde thinks Ronan wants; as Bryde says in MI, Lindenmere - aka Bryde himself - is “guessing what you want. Auto-filling, and we all know how that goes. That’s when shit starts to go wrong.” But regardless, he thinks Ilidorin will remind Ronan of what his purpose is. And with that in mind, it’s no coincidence that Ronan thinks back to being curled up inside Ilidorin while he’s severing his tie to Adam - his last link to humanity.

PART 3: THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE HOLY FOREST

So Ronan is a ley line - more than that, he’s THEE ley line made human. But how did it happen, and what was Niall’s part in it? What role did Aurora play? There are a few options to explore.

Option one: Aurora was instrumental in birthing Ronan. This could either mean that Niall dreamt Aurora and then impregnated her (shudder) which… somehow, through mixing human and dream genetics created Ronan, “son of a dream and son of a dreamer”. This is the explanation that seemed most plausible prior to The Ley Theory™.

Option two: similar to the above, except Niall dreamt Aurora up already pregnant with Ronan, aka the essence of the Greywaren ley line, limiting Niall’s involvement in Ronan’s genetics. This is debatable due to the fact Ronan looks exactly like Niall, but there could be an explanation for that - more on it later.

Option three: Aurora had nothing to do with Ronan’s birth, and she was simply dreamt up after the fact as a copy of Mor o Corra, Declan’s birth mother, to be essentially the perfect caretaker/wife/mother to Niall’s (alleged) children.

(NB: All three of this options assume that Aurora came out of Niall’s Greywaren dreamspace-forest, making her… somehow Ronan’s sibling? Also if she was instrumental in creating the Greywaren but she was created out of Greywaren… is Ronan his own mom? Some conundrums are best left unpondered.)

We don’t know enough yet to provide an answer to the question of how Ronan came into being. We did, however, have other questions, such as: did Niall create Greywaren on purpose, for his own reasons? Niall Lynch being the selfish narcissist he was, manifesting a super-powerful ley line in his own image sounds like the ultimate ego trip.

Or rather... did the ley line/forest/Greywaren ask Niall to be manifested? This option seems to fit the theme of the books better - the idea of choosing to exist, and choosing in what shape to do so. It’s also possible that if the Greywaren is the “prime” ley line, the shepherd of the other dormant ley lines, it realised that it would need a human shape to awaken them, and thus asked Niall to help it become human.

Whichever way the events unfolded, this potentially explains the mystery of why Ronan looks exactly like Niall. It is not simply dream genetics and Aurora not having a DNA (though dream genetics are a mystery regardless - see the dubious existence of Matthew’s internal organs; however, Matthew and Bryde don’t look exactly like Ronan, so there is more to this).

Rather, it is reminiscent of when Cabeswater sacrificed itself to rebuild Gansey at the end of The Raven King: the book states Cabeswater needs to “remember what humans are like” (you could also say, make itself human-shaped). To do that, it “borrows” heavily from the other members of the Gangsey: it takes Blue’s sadness, Ronan’s wonder, Adam’s humanity.

So… is it possible that Greywaren did the same thing, when it made itself “Ronan Lynch shaped”? Did it borrow Niall’s likeness, and basically xerox its human dreamer, while keeping dreamstuff and magic on the inside? In the shape of a man - but not quite a man?

And while we’re at it: is this tied into why Ronan so desperately idolizes Niall - because he literally modeled himself on him? Did Greywaren love its dreamer in the same way Cabeswater loved Ronan?

It’s a lot to think about, we know.

So allow us to end on a somewhat lighter - yet tragic - epiphany: if Ronan and the fabled Greywaren are one and the same… and if Greywaren was Niall’s forest… then that means that Niall was not lying when he said he had a magical artifact called the Greywaren. Niall Lynch is a liar, so we all assumed that he used the Greywaren story to hide the fact that he was a dreamer. But as it turns out, that’s not quite the case.

Niall Lynch was getting all his stuff “from Greywaren”, the same way Ronan got his dream objects from Cabeswater - and he probably delighted in telling everyone (despite it putting Ronan directly in danger - because nobody would have a clue what he meant, ain’t that so clever :) Asshole and absolute madlad.

CONCLUSIONS: “THERE ARE NOT TWO OF YOU”

We have a few ideas about what could happen in the final book. Not anything specific, but more ideas related to the driving themes and concepts of the series.

One thing that could happen is that Ronan will stay asleep for as long as the ley lines are asleep (which is obviously not gonna be forever, because that would take all magic out of the world and sounds very overwhelming).

The good news: you know who’s really good at waking up ley lines? That’s right: one Adam Parrish (THIS IS HOW THE ADAM KING CAN STILL WIN). The bad news: ...of course the first time Adam woke up a ley line he had to do it through sacrificing his hands and his eyes, and waking up all ley lines would be a much larger undertaking, so uhhh. We are in danger dot jpg.

Another thing likely to happen is that Ronan will figure out the truth about himself - a dilemma he’s been struggling with since The Dream Thieves (“What am I, please God what am I?”) - and be tempted to live as a ley line being/god on earth. After all, Bryde has been complaining all along that “giving the world to humans” was a mistake (“We gave the world to them back before we knew any better”), which implies a master plan of reclaiming the world back for magic/nature/forests/ley lines.

However, as tempting as that may sound considering how rotten humans can be to the world, I doubt that the final message of the book will be “humans are the virus and we need to eradicate them”. Of course humanity has a place in the world: remember that this series, by Maggie’s own statement, is a metaphor for illness, creativity, and the way the two interact in artists. And Maggie has also said more than once that she considers herself a storyteller, not a writer: the difference is purely in the interaction with an audience.

What is a story without an audience to hear it? What is art, without people to look at it in wonder and be moved by it (think: Declan as the embodiment of this)? What is magic without humans to witness it and give it shape? By this token, magic is inherently human, and humanity is inherently magic.

This leads us to an important narrative parallel: part of the reason it makes so much sense for Ronan to not be human is that, quite simply… Adam is, and the two are sides of the same coin, desperately in love with each other. All through TRC and the Trilogy Adam is described as “real” and “human”; he is Ronan’s last link to the human world; he is even apparently “studying humanity” in school, whatever that means! He is literally named after the first man, and his surname references a gathering of people (though interestingly it used to be “Trinity”. No we won’t stop catholicshaming Maggie and ourselves).

In that light, Ronan’s desperate “please” to God upon seeing Adam for the first time in CDTH takes on a whole new layer of meaning: please let me be with him, or please let me be like him? That really is the crux of this whole story. Maggie said that at their core, the books of the Trilogy are about community. Ronan needs to find a community, badly - whether this means with other dreamers, with magic and ley lines, or with humans. So does everyone else in the book.

But the two poles - the two sides of the coin - that are in direct contrast are Ronan and Adam: the magical forest being who desperately wants to be human, and the human who’s desperately in love with magic. For Adam, finding community will mean having to accept that he can, and should, make “normal” human friends he can be honest with, while also not hiding the magical parts of himself anymore. After all, there are not two of him.

And for Ronan, well… it probably will have to mean embracing what he is while once again choosing to be “simply human, human, human”. Because, in the end, there are not two of him - what he is supposed to be and what he wants to be. Magic is human; humanity is magic. And Ronan can simply be whoever he chooses to be.

---

A/N: This post could not have happened without the amazing, supportive environment of the Crying Club server who went ham for like 8 hours on discord and sat through an actual symposium on this. @cryingclubs @parrishwife @faeparrish @adamparrishcryingclub @1989dean @sonboyadam @ellipsea @sulkybbarnes @fallingwaterr @orbmaster...y’all are the yees to my haw <3

Tagging a few more people who might be interested in this (please do ask to be removed if you’d like, or let me know if i forgot anyone!): @theamagician @balladofawellknowngun @emmerrr @parrishthieves @adamparrishes @countryboycas @thesongofakillme @papiliomachaon @vlindervin7 @bisexual-magician

#the dreamer trilogy #dt #trc #the raven cycle #ronan lynch #adam parrish #trc meta #dt meta #ley lines #pynch #maggie stiefvater #thecryingclub #long post #i mean REALLY long. be warned #but also like. yeah it's long but it's got HEADINGS and MEMES!!#this was a collaborative labour of love from and the gang please enjoy <3 #our third eyes are WIDE THE FUCK OPEN. crying club supremacy starts now

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victorfrankingstein · 3 years

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It's interesting to think about Ronan's arc with Kavinsky in The Dreams Thieves in relation with Mister Impossible, mainly how The Dream Thieves foreshadows all of Ronan's choices in Mister Impossible and the rest of The Dreamer Trilogy.

Kavinsky and Bryde are two very different characters who have a similar affect on Ronan. Both play the tempeter in their stories, attempting to lure Ronan onto a dangerous and destructive path, a path that just so happens to include taking total control over his dreams. They're also both outward examples of Ronan's internal struggles and desires- (Bryde quite literally) and both act as foils to characters who are very important in Ronan's life. (Kavinsky is to Adam as Bryde is to Declan)

The difference between the two stories is that, in the Dream Thieves, Ronan has a support network, his friends, he has Gansey, who manages to pull him back from the edge. In Mister Impossible, Ronan has lost that support group leaving him free to descend into madness.

Kavinsky never really manages to draw Ronan away from his friends but Bryde definitely does.

#the raven cycle #the dreamer trilogy #trc #tdt #ronan lynch #joseph kavinsky #bryde #mister impossible #the dream thieves #mister impossible spoilers #can i tag this as meta?#meta

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theanimalsarecalling · 3 years

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When Ronan Lynch was first given voice in The Dream Thieves, I was excited. He is definitely the most interesting pov character. By turns, he is poignant, funny and a total shit. His dreaming is presented as a sort of cross between being a gifted child and having a chronic disease, both of which are isolating, and which both feed into the depression he regularly experiences. He is an immensely relatable character. I think that's why so many readers take his pov at face value.

Chapter 12 in The Dream Thieves presents what, to me, is one of the most troubling scenes in the series. This is the chapter in which Ronan meets his brothers at church. Declan is obviously injured. In chpt 2, Declan had just survived a terrible assault from the Gray Man. As described, he had head injuries severe enough that I'm surprised Maggie didn't give him chronic migraines in addition to an incipient ulcer. And Ronan's reaction to seeing this?

"Ronan's mood improved."

This nearly sank Ronan as a character for me.

This is his brother we are talking about. I know they don't have a particularly good relationship, and with the reveals in the Christmas story and TDT, we know it goes back farther than Niall's death or the will. But still. Who gets happy seeing another person brutally beaten?

Then the narrative switches to Declan's story that he was beaten up by burglars, which Ronan knows is a lie. Ronan briefly considers who could have beaten up his brother, who he knows to be a good fighter. But then he says to himself "It was like the truth was a disease Declan thought might kill him."

At this point in the story, we have been told that Declan is a liar, a calculating man-whore, who cheats on his girlfriends and trots out his brother's trauma to get laid, is bossy and controlling, and possibly homophobic and just a general asshole, all filtered through Ronan's pov. (In fairness, Declan's not perfect. The lying, bossing and controlling are all true. He's also crabby.) But by bringing up Declan's lying at this point, Ronan implies that Declan somehow deserved the beating because he's a general asshole. But isn't this dangerously close to blaming the victim?

I eventually circled back around to liking Ronan. He's still relatable. He's also the victim of unusual circumstances, flawed parenting and his own poor choices.

One of the central themes in The Dreamer Trilogy is coming to terms with your own self hatred. Three of the principle characters hate themselves. In Hennessey's and Declan's cases, this stems primarily from parental abuse and neglect. In Ronan's case, it's a bit more complex. I think Ronan's is caused by three things:

1. The conflict between being a devout Catholic and gay man. Personally, I think this is the least of it. By the time you reach CDTH, he's pretty openly out, and seems to have made peace with it.

2. The gifted child / chronic illness thing. These are circumstances beyond Ronan's control. And they are truly isolating for him. The moment he realized he couldn't be with Adam at Harvard and he was stuck accepting that all of Adam's friends must think of him as a hopeless fuck-up, was truly heart wrenching. (And Declan's suggestion to Adam that he blame it all on Ronan, while practical, certainly showed some resentment on Declan's part).

3. But the biggest reason is this. There was a very dangerous dynamic going on in the Lynch family. Two children were favored, and one was isolated and excluded, made to work, and regularly placed in dangerous situations. Of course, Ronan only witnessed the first two. But witnessing the abuse of a sibling can mess you up almost as much as the victim. Ronan learned to think treating Declan this way was normal. He accepted the narrative that Declan was somehow deficient and therefore deserved to be treated badly. Even in CDTH, the way Ronan treats Declan is appalling.

How do you reconcile this with the Ronan who fought Adam's father to protect him, who has such high ideals, who wants to be a hero? Well, you can't. In accepting the abuse Declan's received as normal and deserved, Ronan has been perpetuating it.

For those of you who've read the other stuff I've written here, you've probably realized I keep circling back to the same place.

The biggest lie Ronan has been telling himself is that the way he treats Declan is normal and okay. Until Ronan recognizes that he had been perpetuating his brother's abuse, and makes amends, he will never be true to his ideals, will never learn kindness, will never grow up and become a hero. Eventually, this will affect his relationship with Adam, who has eyes and who is an abuse victim himself.

So the only way forward is for Ronan to grow up, recognize his behavior and make amends by taking Declan's concerns seriously and treating him with kindness.

#mister impossible #ronan lynch #declan lynch #the dream thieves #call down the hawk #the dreamer trilogy #the raven cycle #another long-ass meta #I'm long-winded

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