they/he/it | probably crying rn | I'm like if an orange cat was a human with anxiety | tlt & trc posting for the most part, featuring queerness and cats and brainrot
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.
the situation with harry potter is kind of unprecedented in some ways imo because it is maybe the largest media franchise in history to be created & owned by a single person who still has direct creative control over it. who is also a billionaire with significant cultural/political influence. like the usual "no ethical consumption under capitalism" type excuses shatter on impact when the bigoted author in question is logging onto twitter every day saying explicitly that when you buy the tim hortons ravenclaw donut she is using your donut money to fund the genocide of trans people. like with big franchises usually there's at least a little more diffusion of responsibility than this
Take yourself out on dates. Go to the movie theater alone. Go out to eat alone. Enjoy life alone, it's okay. Enjoy life with friends. Take you're friends out on dates. Have sex with people you don't love. Have sex with people you don't want to marry. Have friends with benefits and hook ups and one night stands and situationships. Never have sex. Never get married. Marry your best friend. Kiss your friends. Date multiple people. When people say you'll never be happy alone kill them with hammers 🔨🔨🔨🔨. Live alone with several pets. Be happy. Be free. Do you.
Gansey is actually so cunt if you think about it. His parents are conservative republicans. He’s in a homoerotic situationship with every single one of his friends and some old man from Europe. Died twice. Stole his ex situationship’s girl — ON SAID SITUATIONSHIP’S BIRTHDAY. Always on the phone, always busy and booked. Punched his Latin teacher, threw a Molotov cocktail at a substance party he wasn’t even invited to. Can fly a helicopter, isn’t very good at it. Drives a vintage car even though it’s shit, simply for aesthetics. Wears contacts instead of his nerdy glasses, because he’s vain. Writes in an old leather notebook instead of just using his laptop. Truly believes in magic. His roommate is a ghost. Captain of the rowing team. Everyone at his fancy private school knows his name, everyone thinks he’s cool but also very very weird. The absolute aura on this guy.
when you ask people to stop engaging in harry potter fandom they act like you've asked them to pull the plug on their own ventilator after murdering their entire family in front of them. like holy shit my bad i didn't realise that you formed emotional attachments that were that unhealthy
"but it was my childhood" okay cool you're an adult now
"but i love it a lot" okay cool there are other things to love
"but it helped me through a hard time" okay cool you can find other ways to cope
"but my ship/my character/my fic/my fanart/my--" someone has asked you to stop engaging with a woman's intellectual property because that woman is actively contributing to the literal genocide of trans people in her country and beyond. her actions have emboldened murderers, legislation meant to deny life-saving care, and ruined livelihoods and safety of many people. what could possibly be more fucking important. truly.
i get that it's hard to let stuff go, because it is. it's very fucking hard, especially when you love something very deeply. but your personal struggle letting go of a comfort blanket is never as important as someone else's life, and that's the point we are at now, and if you are not listening to the trans people in your life and beyond that are whistleblowing this, you have blood on your hands and i will not help you wash it off when you finally look down and notice it
richard gansey iii is so real. his friend didn’t feel like hanging out with him due to being tired from working two jobs and studying all the time and he immediately went “omfg. i’m losing him. he hates me. he doesn’t want to be my friend anymore.” like chill, dude. but also, i absolutely get it. you’re so me.
