threesecrets | open rp post;

open rp post;

+ Leave me a starter, an idea, whatever you like!
+ As always consider this your cw: weird kinks are possible

+ I ship pretty much whatever, though Gansey and Adam are of course favorites. m/m only

+ Hit me up on PM or Discord (thatwasdumb#0150) if you want to plot something.

Sorry for getting back to this a bit late- yesterday was chaos- but yes!

My vague thought here is something after the whole "while I'm gone, dream me the world", and dragging it out and see where it goes. Gansey still sort of wound up, and Ronan sort of somewhere between feral and bittersweet about the whole thing and having feelings about Gansey leaving for DC. Both sort of restless and edgy after the whole thing with K and setting cars on fire. Either ending back up at Monmouth, or finding someplace to park for a bit that isn't K's parking lot.

But I'm open to other thoughts/ideas/so on. :)

I didn't want you to think I forgot about this. Work went crazy the past few days and I've been mentally exhausted when I got home. I didn't want to write weird rambly things that didn't make sense. LOL

I never have enough chances to write Gansey wound up. I've been trying to set something up for that since I started playing him. I will look over the books so I can be coherent.

Where are you in the books? There's a couple bits I could share but I don't want to give spoilers.

Oh, no worries at all! This week was sort of crazy for me too! So I totally know how that can be.

Wound up Gansey seems like such fun, and there's definitely not enough of it. So yes, excellent, this seems like a neat place to kick things off with them. :)

I just started Blue Lily! But I'm also totally cool with spoilers; I'm way too into fanfics and trolling tumblr for ship things to worry about it too much, lol. So I totally don't mind if you wanna share stuff!

The Dream Thieves is such a Ronan/Gansey book. I'm really sad that it got dropped in Blue Lily. I know Ronan's supposed to be with Adam, but the change seems so abrupt considering things like 'dream me the world' and Ronan's meltdown over the Pig. There are so many hints that they had a thing for each other.

If you're okay with spoilers, then you know what happens in the end of Raven King?

Do you want to do something after the party or after Ronan gives Gansey the dreamed Pig? The substance party happened earlier in the story than 'dream me the world'. (Although I love that line. Sure, that was platonic. Especially when Ronan then dreams Gansey the thing he loves most back to reality.)

God, it so is. And yeah, that's sort of my issue with how the ships seem to be working out. Just because it seems sort of like it hit a point of "oh I should make the endgame ships happen now". So yes, I mostly just wish it was less abrupt. I think there were ways to make those ships happen without how it seems to rely so heavily on narrative fiat.

It's not that I dislike Adam and Ronan in concept! But like. At the Barns, you have Adam who's all "I can't fight Ronan's demons for him" and Gansey who has both literally and metaphorically done that exact thing. Not doing something with that just feels sort of awkward.

And only vaguely! I know Gansey dies, I know Ronan does.. something? That connects him with Cabeswater?

Oh man, after he gives him the Pig could be good, too. Depends which of them you wanna play with being all wound up, really, because I think there's really interesting aspects to both.

Also as an aside, Maggie's intention was apparently for Ronan to very overtly connect himself to the Camaro in that scene. Which I think is interesting both from an angle where Ronan very much identifies himself with the thing Gansey loves most. And also the way that Gansey considers home "Henrietta, the Pig, Ronan". And also how much it feels like that factors into the trajectory where Ronan's able to accept himself at the end.

I just love the 'while I'm gone dream me the world' line a lot. I also find it interesting that Kavinsky makes a callback to that line when he takes Ronan back to the fairgrounds, because it very much makes it feel like Gansey and Kavinsky are set up almost as romantic foils.

But okay, okay, practical stuff and not just my musings: do we wanna maybe keep it with starting at the substance party? And then if we feel like it, we can always slide over to Ronan gifting him the Pig afterward. Because I do like both ideas. And Ronan's freakout that Gansey is leaving for three days is precious, heh.

I completely agree with the "oh I should make the endgame ships happen now" idea. I've never felt that any of the relationships were well developed. It's like she got mostly through the series and realized she had endgame relationships that had to be shoved in even if they hadn't been implied before. While reading Blue Lily I actually had to stop and think if I saw signs of Ronan and Adam before since Dream Thieves was so heavily Ronsey.

Gansey does die and Ronan does something. It's complicated. LOL

I don't dislike Adam and Ronan either but their relationship seems very forced. I agree about the 'not fighting Ronan's demons for him'. Adam's more 'be your own person' and 'fight your own battles'. I think that was supposed to be a contrast between them since Gansey is always fighting Ronan's demons. In a way, he's Ronan's white knight. There's a scene later that Adam compares Gansey to a knight. Probably to Adam this seems unhealthy. It probably is since Ronan and Gansey are very codependent. But I think it shows how deep their feelings are too. Which isn't something I really get from Adam and Ronan. They say they have deep feelings and we're told that through the narration, but Gansey and Ronan show us that through their actions. I won't give too many spoilers, but Gansey will fight Ronan's demons again. Which makes it more frustrating to me that they don't end up together.

I love Gansey and Ronan's relationship in relation to the Pig. When Ronan's with the Pig while Gansey's in DC... Thinking that if he touches the Pig, Gansey will feel it. Home being Ronan and the Pig. Ronan risking everything, including his life, to bring the Pig back. There was so much potential. Then it feels like Ronan completely forgot Gansey in Blue Lily. He has the Barns back so he doesn't need Gansey. (That's actually a concept I'm writing fic about.)

I really get the impression that Gansey and K are romantic foils. K shows Ronan how to dream the Pig, then Ronan leaves him to give the Pig back. It feels so much like a breakup. The whole scene when Ronan leaves with the Pig screams breakup. It seems like Ronan's leaving the 'other woman' to go back to his steady relationship. K is the scornful lover kidnapping Matthew to get back at Ronan for picking Gansey. I get the feeling that Gansey is probably jealous of the time Ronan spends with K. I think he worries K is going to get him in trouble or killed, but I could easily see him frustrated by the time Ronan spends out at night. (But never acknowledging that it's jealousy unless pushed.)

I love the musings. I rarely get to talk Ronsey in depth with people.

Let's start with the substance party. I skimmed over it last night and I can reread it later today.

Yeah, like. The Gansey/Blue stuff in Dream Thieves felt very.. weird.. to me. Like Raven Boys ends that relationship more or less on the note of Gansey outright ignoring the vision and physically pushing Blue out of the way to get to Adam to make sure he's okay. So when we get to stuff like "whatever sort of lamp it went to, Gansey looked like he wanted one" I'm just sort of like "really? since when? why?"

And the whole thing of Blue blaming Adam for not being invited to DC was very ??? to me since this never gets brought up with Gansey-- aka the literal person that invites Adam in the first place, and who was responsible for the trip. Which made their breakup feel sort of- contrived. Which is not to say that Adam didn't behave badly, but their fight seemed less about that and more this weird take that Adam was just treating her like someone he wanted to kiss. So it kind of comes across like "I need them to break up now" and less letting the characters driving the conflict.

One of the things I actually found frustrating about the "Maggie reads the Raven Cycle" tweets, is that for the ones I've gone through so far, she very clearly thinks she telegraphs Gansey/Blue better than it ever came across to me as a reader.

I could pick up on some very vague Adam and Ronan hints in Dream Thieves- but I think that only worked because I knew going in. Whereas the narrative doesn't really mention it at all. We get "Ronan's second secret was Adam Parrish ... It was hard not to stare at the odd and elegant lines of his face." Which does not really suggest interest from either of them at all.

TL;DR, I 100% didn't feel either of the endgame ships were set up well in Dream Thieves at all. It actually sort of irks me a bit. Because I feel like if Ronan did have those feelings, I wanted some hint to come up during his confrontation with Kavinsky in the forest.

"What's here K? Nothing" "Just us" "That's not enough" "Don't say Gansey and don't say you don't swing that way, I'm in your head", etc. Like the fact that Ronan's response there is about Kavinsky allegedly misinterpreting what Gansey is to him, and does not touch on the idea that he apparently has that romantic interest for Adam at all -- not even in the narration -- is Weird.

Personally, I feel like in TRB/TDT, Adam and Gansey both have some unhealthy tendencies toward Roman (and Ronan has some unhealthy tendencies toward both Gansey and K). But I think Gansey's is the one that seems to lean itself more toward an actual relationship.

Like, Adam is just so apathetic about Ronan. And it really seems to come from a place where his inability to accept help is put on other people. Gansey, on the other hand, seems to come from that he's spent the past several months thinking that Ronan had literally tried to kill himself, and that he needs to do everything he can to buy Ronan as much time as he possibly can to have as much of a chance as he can give him to get to the other side of that.

Like the scene in the church in Raven Boys where Gansey sort of compares the idea of losing Ronan to his own death when he was a child is just. It kills me.

It is admittedly not true in the way that Gansey originally thinks it happens, but Ronan also talks about being pretty ambivalent about his continued existence at one point, so I'm not sure I'd say he's entirely out of line, either. It really seems to be Chainsaw where Ronan finally starts to start getting his footing back. And that is very clearly an on-going process. So Gansey and Ronan have pretty good reasons for being as codependent as they are, imo.

And post-Dream Thieves, I could see them managing to work things out to a less intensely codependent degree. (Though, in fiction there are interesting themes in how intense that dynamic is, too.) The idea of Ronan no longer needing Gansey to the same degree, but still wanting him could have been really interesting territory to explore with them! Whereas with Adam... I feel like he has a lot more to work through to reach a similar point.

Admittedly what I've seen of Adam/Ronan is mostly from quotes / meta / etc. But there are definitely some lines that come across like Adam is in love with the feeling of being loved. Which, you know-- he's eighteen and has been through a lot of crap, and survived a life and childhood rather pointedly devoid of love, so I don't even necessarily feel like that would be an awful approach. But the rest of them seem very- yeah, the narrative declaring they have these really deep feelings without really supporting that. So I'm definitely tentative on it.

Oooh, that sounds like a really cool idea for a fic. And god, I loved that bit about thinking that Gansey could feel it when he touched the Pig. Just gosh, the way the Pig functions as this sort of central connection between the boys is so neat.

And yeah, it really feels like a breakup when Ronan leaves K when he has the Pig back. That bit where K says he doesn't have to go back to Monmouth, and Ronan says it's the most ludicrous thing he's said, so he doesn't acknowledge it. The way that Kavinsky is so focused on the idea of Ronan and Gansey having a sexual relationship, and how vicious about it he gets after Ronan leaves him. And also K's phonecall with Gansey when he's in DC, on Ronan's phone. Like he wanted Gansey to know that he has Ronan drunk, and the weird sending him a dick pic thing seems almost like an attempt to create this concept of, you know, sex. And Gansey cannot calm down and suddenly understands why Glendower might have murdered someone and shoved them in a tree. :>

And I'd have to check the wording, but I feel like Ronan and K's "this was never going to be you and me" parallels Adam's thoughts about how it wasn't going to be him and Blue, which I feel really drives in the breakup message. Oh and to go back to the idea of Ronan and K's last confrontation in the forest-- it's basically K saying "you could have me" and Ronan saying "that's not what I want". So yes, absolutely I get the same sort of vibe of 'the other woman' vs. 'the steady relationship'.

And I think there's a line when they're driving to the substance party and Ronan knows where to go, about how he doesn't tell Gansey why he knows the directions, and Gansey doesn't ask him. Which very much casts it as a Contentious Subject that they are Pointedly Not Talking About. And. I mean. In Raven Boys Gansey literally considers trying to give Ronan a curfew or quitting from the crew team so that he can spend more time with him on Fridays nights to keep him away from Kavinsky. Which-- yes, exactly. It's very much presented as being about Ronan being unsafe, but I do think you're right and it feels like it implies a certain sort of unstated jealousy, too.

But yes, excellent! I just reread it because it's such a fun scene. So I'm very jazzed. The whole Gansey-on-fire thing, and how into it Ronan is, it just makes for such a fascinating dynamic. And Kavinsky's attempts at being insulting, and how neither of them flinch about it, is definitely fascinating. So yes! Seeing what spins out from that I think has a whole lot of potential, heh. Especially for possible ship-leaning things. And such. ;)

I did not mean to have this many feelings about this series, but I was hooked from the first book. The characters and their relationships -- or even the potential of those relationships, maybe. It's just really fascinating. And I also like the plot, and the magic of the dreamers/Cabeswater/Adam as the Magician is all really cool.

Honestly, when I read the books, I never had the impression that Gansey was even interested in women. He might be attracted to personalities. People who challenge him and put him in his place. (Ronan, Adam, Blue) But overall he doesn’t think of them in the same terms as the boys in the book. He writes poetry in his head about Ronan and Adam. He has these beautiful descriptions of Adam. When he’s with Blue we get excuses of why he’s attracted, not these details that he cherishes about his Raven Boys. We get his attraction from Ronan, who is a terrible POV character for Gansey’s feelings for Blue. Especially when Ronan knows Gansey so well. That line about the lampshade isn’t really selling the idea that Gansey’s attracted. Interested, yes, but Gansey is interested in many different things and that doesn’t mean romantic interest. It’s the equivalent of writing sonnets about Ronan and Adam and saying ‘she’s got a nice face’ about Blue.

That fight felt very contrived. It never made sense. She was mad at Adam but not at Gansey. The fact that she didn’t even want to go made it feel even more forced. I think Adam wanted someone to want him. The fact that Blue wouldn’t kiss him upset him more than anything. I think it might have been part of his self doubt and his worries about being ‘white trash’ compared to the other boys. Adam did behave badly and they needed to break up, but the fact that Adam getting physically violent when angry was forgivable and not inviting her to an event hosted by Gansey’s parents isn’t is very strange. It also sends a bad message on many levels.

I really can’t read Maggie’s Twitter and other social media. It’s just a personal thing. My reasons really aren’t fandom approved so I will leave it at that. I get notifs that she updates and I skim what it’s about (like a new book or a discarded bit of the books) but I can’t follow her. I’m glad that others enjoy her posts.

I went to an event where Maggie was signing books. She said that she never plots her books, writing wherever the muse leads. She said basically she scrapped an entire novel’s worth of content from just Dream Thieves. She implied that she totally rewrote the book on one of the drafts. That makes me wonder if she shoved in the Adam bits because the books were to Ronsey.

Also, I followed someone on Tumblr that went to one of her workshops and she admitted she probably should have written endgame as Ronsey instead of Pynch.

The majority of the narration is Ronan/Gansey. K is constantly calling them out on it. Ronan’s thoughts about Gansey make it obvious that there’s attraction there and deeper feelings. K’s right in that bit. He’s in Ronan’s head. He knows what Ronan’s feeling. He knows that Ronan’s feelings for Gansey are more than Ronan’s willing to acknowledge. The fact that Ronan gets angry over Gansey showing ankle in the dollar store and being annoyed that Adam interrupted them by calling hints at a lot. I’m sure Maggie says it hints that he had a thing for Adam, but that doesn’t explain why a tousled, teenage boy Gansey makes Ronan so angry and frustrated.

“Like, Adam is just so apathetic about Ronan.” Thank you for saying that. I’ve been trying to find the right words for it since I first read the series and that hits the point exactly. Adam doesn’t seem to feel anything for Ronan other than Ronan is Gansey’s friend so they’re all in the same circle more than having actual FEELINGS for him. They’re friends. Not even super close friends. He’s helping Gansey search because it’s the right thing to do, but not because his crush might be dead in a ditch. But we’re supposed to believe that they were True Love since they met.

There’s more I could say on that, but it would spoil the later books, so I won’t.

Gansey buying more time for Ronan is a big thing in the books that most people ignore. Gansey gives up a LOT, including his morals, for Ronan. I usually say that Ronan is one of Gansey’s great weaknesses. He’ll do anything for him, sacrifice anything he has available to make sure Ronan has that time.

I really think that since Ronan’s starting to heal and Gansey even sees that when he’s presented with the dream Pig, they could evolve. I was disappointed that basically Ronan runs off to the Barns and ignores Gansey after he gets his home back. Again, another subject that I could go on about but spoilers. LOL

I think Adam has a lot to work through about all the boys. BLLB has a lot of potential for Adam that I think Maggie ignored. I’m not sure how far you are in it, so I’m not sure what scenes to discuss.

I think Adam wants someone to love him. I think he wants someone to make him believe he’s worthy of love. Ronan in many ways feels like he could be an escape. He’s a ready made family for Adam who will love him unquestioning. Ronan will give his whole heart to him (because in YA you can only love one person ever). There’s more stuff with Adam too, especially in the first chapters of Call Down the Hawk that seem to emphasize this. Also, in Opal, which is a weird story and I didn’t understand how certain characters acted in it compared to the earlier books.

Maggie says she did not mean to imply something improper happened while Ronan was unconscious. Uh huh… that pic was taken while Ronan was drugged out of his mind. That was not a good place to go if she wanted K to have redeeming qualities, which she seems to want now. Or she doesn’t want to deal with what was implied by the situation. Everything about what K did was meant to stake a claim on Ronan and to make Gansey angry. The fact that Gansey is so wounded by Ronan breaking his trust and by the whole situation is telling. Gansey doesn’t get angry like that over anything else. All the things that happen to Gansey in the books that should bother him until he can’t calm down and it’s K’s prodding and the destruction of the Pig that does it. Basically with that call, Gansey lost the two things that meant home to him: Ronan and the Pig.

That was basically the wording about the ‘breakup’ with K and Ronan. K really thought that teaching Ronan to dream would make them a couple of some sort. Ronan not wanting K or wanting that whatever with K and going back to Gansey screams relationship.

The scene with the party is so good. I just finished rereading. Ronan not caring that he’s being called Gansey’s dog and Gansey’s not flinching away from it. It’s true or they don’t need to bother protesting because they know the truth about their relationship. I love how Ronan is into that side of Gansey and not condemning it. I feel like Gansey isn’t accepted as a full person by most people in the books. Ronan sees the good and the bad, the stuff that annoys him, and still loves Gansey.

I love the series, good moment and flaws. I haven’t had a lot of people to talk to about it so I’m excited to be able to ramble with someone who has so many feelings for both Gansey and Ronan.

Who should set up the post party thread?

So I have like, half a response written, but it's been a wild few days, so I'll finish it later today. But I figured I'd at least hit you back about the RP stuff in the immediate, as I have too many feelings about these boys and these books to ever be brief.

SO I'm pretty flexible for set up tbh. Either way works for me! I have vague thoughts for something picking up when they're back at Monmouth, but both of them too wired and Gansey still all Gansey-on-Fire, so if that works for you I can totally toss something up. I know indecisive is rarely useful, but I'm honestly pretty easy about writing starters and such.

That said, Ronan is my newest muse, so if you want to put something together / have ideas, go for it!

The setup at Monmouth works for me. I'm sure that Gansey was still wired after all that. He rarely lets that side out. I forgot how good that scene was until I read it. And Ronan's going to be a mess since Gansey's going to leave. I can also see some jealousy coming out after Gansey sees Ronan and K. There's so many directions it could go.

Whatever will make it easier for you to write him. Gansey's my loudest muse atm so I can adapt pretty easily.

Yess, the scene is so great, I love it so much!

And Ronan is absolutely gonna be a bit of a mess over Gansey leaving. Implication seems to be that it's been a while since they've been apart like this, even if it is only three days. And ohh, I do like the jealousy idea, too. Since it's definitely something that's in the air in that scene, so I'm totally down to play with that.

So yeah, there's definitely a lot of potential directions to go with it. I'll toss something together tomorrow and we can see how it works out! :>

And here you go! Let me know if that works for you, totally cool with tweaking a bit if needed.. it's basically my first starter with Ronan, heh. :>

The starter was wonderful. I'm sorry that it took so long for me to answer back. I think my sleep deficient finally caught up to me and I crashed over most of the weekend. I think I'm more functional now? LOL

Oh, no worries at all! Yeah, yesterday was catch up on my sleep debt day, lol. But I'm gonna hit this back in a second and I'm already so excited about it! I am with you on functional being an improvement, though.

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open rp post;

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oh uh, some mention of Ronan's suicide attempt stuff. and boy I got wordy, jfc.

Don't worry about being wordy. I love talking about the boys' dynamic

just a short note, tldr discussion will follow later XD

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