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[parsifalbauer]

Just remembered Adam canonically works for the government and is engaged to a known terrorist. Ok king!!

[olreid]

also stiefvater made this whole point of "declan's not a villain ronan's an unreliable narrator and so's gansey" and then declan treats matthew like that. like what the fuck do you consider abuse, maggie?

yeah i think that last question is what's really frustrating, because one abuse survivor making the choice to practice some level of forgiveness or w/e is like. ok sure, that is an option that feels healing for some people. but we explored that with adam at the end of trk, in the other major trc storyline that dealt with abuse. so now when declan forgives his abusers - in such a way as to also minimize the abuse that he has perpetrated in imitating them - the question becomes, does mstief see that as an obligation or inevitability on the part of abuse survivors?

it's also frustrating to see matthew's and jordan's/the rest of the girls' experiences sidelined in the process, precisely because sibling abuse is so often already minimized and left out of conversations about domestic abuse in favor of centering parental and spousal abuse.. and it's so rarely acknowledged that disabled people are particularly vulnerable to abuse, especially in the domestic context, so it was hard to see jordan's and matthew's disabilities minimized in order to put forward these narratives about jordan bootstrapping herself out of the vulnerability and dependence conferred by being a dream - if you just work hard you can have the life you want! - and matthew coming to realize that the violence he experiences is actually just his brothers showing him that they care. (???) whatever. whatever whatever whatever

[olreid]

bouncing off alfie's tags from yesterday and subsequent conversation in chat but as long as we're talking about things that are horrifying but ultimately weren't really treated as horror, i want to talk about copies. one of the most unsettling parts of greywaren to me was spending time with mór and feniall and realizing that for her, dreaming a copy of niall to replace him honestly ended up working pretty well. the same can be said for niall with aurora, in retrospect; he wanted a wife to raise his children and he got what he wanted. there doesn't have to be any acknowledgement of their failed first attempt, because the second generation were dreamt expressly to succeed in the wake of failure and slotted into their roles so well that niall and mór were able to bury their respective pasts almost totally. they can even unload their memories, which are the real evidence that there was something to copy in the first place, something about the original conditions that somehow wasn't enough or wasn't quite right.

it reminds me of some of the paul discussion we had after nona [ntn spoilers at the links], which is to say there is something troubling about copying because it obscures or erases the particular conditions of production that gave rise to the original. imo feniall in greywaren is a particularly unsubtle and unsettling example cause he just. carries around a memory erasure bag lol. patron saint of not having to accept the consequences of your actions; for the low low price of absolutely nothing he can not only take your place in your failmarriage but also get rid of your failmarriage memories so you can go do something else without having to feel guilty about your failure. this seems to work incredibly well and would work totally if not for the children, which are the real evidence of a marriage you can't erase (not that niall and mór didn't have that conversation; "we should kill it before it's too late.")

so much of the novels' events are set in motion by trying to erase the unerasable; a relationship you already had, a life you already lived. from aurora and feniall's point of view, what does it mean to be made to replace someone who is still living? what does it mean to be in a relationship with the person who dreamt you to replace their ex?? i want the aurora gothic horror bluebeardesque realization that she is not the first, that her schematics were drafted based on an original. i want feniall mutiny rather than cheerful obedience. i want FULL god emperor of dune where duncan idaho keeps getting cloned, discovering he's a clone, trying to rebel, and getting put down only to be cloned again, his memories erased.

another really interesting tension that was ultimately never more than glanced at is the absolute reality of dreams as fully agentic people vs. the fact that in the process of their creation, their personalities can be shaped by those who dream them; thinking of matthew saying he felt conflicted about being made to be likable but that it came in handy and also the confirmation we get in greywaren that aurora was explicitly created to be mór "but softer." i want full westworld-style grappling with the extent to which personality is destiny; i want to see characters try to figure out how much one can rebel against their original design, or whether they even want to.

anyway. i miss when trc was at least nominally interested in the consequences of copying; see a parking lot full of mitsubishis and camaros draining the ley line in dream thieves. but on the other hand, ronan was able to dream a copy that absorbed his death in bllb, and gansey was recopied so accurately he is taken to have been resurrected rather than cloned in trk. idk. something something copies only ever distracting from the root issue at hand; ronan couldn't avoid passing through death. gansey couldn't be brought back. niall and mór's relationship couldn't ever be saved. you can cover up those things but you can't undo them. can we talk about it i want to talk about it

[crimeronan]

the most important question for me is. was greywaren gay in ALL his past lives or was there just like. something about being a sad little chronic pain boy with niall lynch's feelings that made him like "yeah this time..... This Time.... i want to fuck men 🙏"

[parsifalbauer]

You know it’s bad when I’M the one saying Declan should have died

[olreid]

overall pretty pissed off about how the overarching message of greywaren was like. well everything was done out of love / with the best of intentions so ultimately no one can really be upset. like. no. if it's not received as love then it doesn't count, or at least it's not enough; i can't do anything with this except be hurt by it. declan can say he loves matthew all he wants and he might be telling the truth but the fact is that he turned off matthew's consciousness at will because he could. niall can say he loved declan and he might be telling the truth but the fact is that he made a nightmare out of his childhood and then left him to pick up the pieces. saying it was love isn't enough, and in some ways it's a distraction from the twisted dynamics of control and dependency that ultimately underlie these relationships and were never fully excavated and resolved.

[olreid]

the way it's BECAUSE declan is able to successfully frame his parents' abuse as love that he is able to do the same with his abuse of matthew... that maybe the need to shield himself from the reality of how he treated his brother is what leads him to go so far in justifying his parents’ behavior… stop the ride i want to get off

[olreid]

also exceedingly pissed off about all this. btw

[olreid]

like "dependent," object language ("sack of flour," "thing") animal language ("leashed," dog in a car) not in control of his waking hours, turned off against his will, and then absolutely nothing comes of it? what was the point. why is this not the center of the entire book and series. what are we doing if not interrogating the creator/creation dynamic and what we owe to each other in a world where we ultimately all depend on each other and working to reaffirm the subjectivity of those who have been objectified in order to more thoroughly oppress and control them? whats the point of any of it if he was going to get knocked out shoved offstage only to turn up fine in the end so no one had to deal with the reality of what happened to him. that's what's been happening to him his whole life and the whole point is the inisidious violence of that. i would like to speak to someone

[olreid]

anyone else feeling like. a lifetime of being raised as a human and then told upon adulthood that no being human was not going to work out for them

[olreid]

ok!

[parsifalbauer]

The fact that Niall didn’t gank baby Ronan bc he saw that baby Declan loved him is going to kill me fr tho

[parsifalbauer]

It makes sense since I have directed my primarily trc main blog followers here each time a book has come out but HUGE jumpscare when I just looked at my follower count and saw there are literally hundreds of you here

[parsifalbauer]

It’s so funny I made my icon here art of Adam at Harvard back when that was like the ONLY thing we knew about this series and I have just never changed it

[shenandoahcafe]

Literally sooooo funny that Hennessy was like "why do you want that boring ass bitch I hate you" and then immediately latched onto Declan's narrative foil

[parsifalbauer]

Girl remember lindenmere

[seavoice]

ronan in mister impossible: what if i dream a copy of my beloved dead mother who inadvertently caused the beginning of my need to keep myself hidden and secret and who i lost traumatically just as i was becoming truthful with and about myself. this is a question that haunts me frequently. i think it is no bueno to dream a copy of a real person. it would crush me. her words to me is what i define myself as. her words to me are the last ones i recall as i lose my last grip on reality/

matthew in mister impossible: what if i was dreamt as a replacement or to satisfy a certain need in the family like how i now suspect the beloved dead mother of whom i was the favourite. who is actual based on my older brother’s birth mom. sometimes to remember her i go stand in the miserable security system that dredges up my worst memories. i don’t want to put words to the terror of contextualizing her existence in frame of mine.

declan in mister impossible: i’m coming to terms that aurora is my actual mom no matter who birthed me but that doesn’t make it easier to process the implications of her being dreamt for the purpose of being a loving mother. i make wrong assumptions of dreams baed on that. i am unsure if she had true autonomy and freedom or was just an extension of my father, which makes her non-resistance in his decision to involve me in a life of trauma and violence a) passivity or b) inability. not sure which is worse. my whole arc has been kind of revolving around my memory of her.

these same dumbfucks with short-term memory loss in greywaren: LMAOOO who’s aurora lynch?????

[shenandoahcafe]

The fact that Niall MANUALLY gave Ronan bipolar instead of just accidentally passing it on like most parents

[parsifalbauer]

*eric andre voice* and was niall lynch a “good dad all along” when he took his 10 year old with him to black market deals where he got tied up in the trunks of cars and became a target for people wanting to get to the greywaren?

[parsifalbauer]

The thing is that I think I’ve landed firmly in the Being A Hater camp but that fairy market scene really did give me everything I’ve ever hoped and prayed for

[parsifalbauer]

Like ok this book literally undid Declan’s wholeass character for the whole series but also he thought matthew died and then went joker mode killing a bunch of guys… so maybe we won