#j kavinsky

[mattheww-lynchh]

i’m late but happy kavinsky day i’m gonna cry over him now

[thecorvidrotation]

spikenards replied to your post “spikenards replied to your post “spikenards replied to your post ...”

he’s got a sky last name and he’s from nj and eastern europe & the fuck ass xenophobic description of him... the first time i read the series i got to his intro and was like “finally! a jew!” and then the bit about how foreign his face looks and i was like ....oh...

ohhhh yeah okay that makes sense. I guess it didn’t occur to me bc like I said I have a friend who’s Bulgarian but her family is some denomination of Christian, and my brain being my brain I didn’t think about it past that. Well actually I didn’t think of Kavinsky having any kind of religious background at all, I kinda just don’t think about him very deeply in general. >_>

Honestly, Stief being Stief, I can’t tell what she did or didn’t mean by all that. -_- I mean this is the series where supposedly single character except for Henry and Calla is very white, and also extremely self-analytical Adam never seriously examines his sexuality. There’s a lot of areas where I think Stief -- like all of us at one point or another -- just didn’t really think through her own biases.

[mattheww-lynchh]

oh god what if maggie was like “hey here’s some new dream pack content including prokopenko’s real name” and it wasn’t Ilya what the fuck would we do

[mattheww-lynchh]

I’m at work but how tf am I supposed to focus on what people are ordering when K died today 😔 I’m so sad

[thecorvidrotation]

spikenards replied to your post “The bracelets tho!!!! Like??? Like how Ronan is highkey ashamed of how...”

this is his bower

spikenards

replied to your post

“The bracelets tho!!!! Like??? Like how Ronan is highkey ashamed of how...”

kavinsky is a bird and he is courting him

Kavinsky #confirmed for a big angry magpie....... tbh tho........ ..

[mattheww-lynchh]

listening to russian rap and crying over kavinsky :(

[thecorvidrotation]

spikenards replied to your post “spikenards replied to your post “spikenards replied to your post ...”

like tbqh? if kavinsky is the only character in the series who can be casually read as jewish (ie without extensive headcanons justifying it) you should probably do some re-evaluation

HONESTLY........ there’s nothing you can read him as that’s like,,,, actually good, in any way,,

although I gotta admit, i don’t think I picked up on those implications myself? but when it comes to our local terrible trainwreck J. Kavinsky’s background I usually get distracted by the fact that he’s from New Jersey, and by the Bulgarian connection (bc I have a friend who’s Bulgarian).

[thecorvidrotation]

Hi! So I'm rereading TDT (it's been a while so it's almost like reading for the first time again) and one thing that isn't too clear for me is Ronan and Kavinsky's (sorry if I'm spelling that wrong) relationship. Did Ronan like-like Kavinsky, or was it merely just them being "friends" and showing one another their magic? I would love to hear your opinion on this, because it's not clear, and I think it would help me understand their dynamic a bit more :).

hmmmmm well, there are probably those in the fanbase who have ruminated on this more than I have, but here’s my take:

I think there’s a lot of confusion, muddled feelings, and general subversion of sexuality muddying the emotional waters for Ronan in TDT. The reader can tell that he’s generally attracted to guys, but it’s written nearly between the lines because he’s completely refusing to acknowledge it. Because of this refusal, we don’t see him actually have crushes on or romantic attractions to male characters for practically the entire book. He flat-out refuses to allow himself that. 

This changes at the end of TDT, starting with his dreamscape exchange with Kavinsky–

“Don’t say Dick Gansey, man. Do not say it. He is never going to be with you. And don’t tell me you don’t swing that way, man. I’m in your head.”

“That’s not what Gansey is to me,” said Ronan.

“You didn’t say you don’t swing that way.”

Ronan was silent. Thunder growled under his feet. “No, I didn’t.”

This is the closest Ronan comes to openly acknowledging that he’s gay in the series, which tbh I think is fine – anything in more overt terms would probably be out of character for him, at this point in his development. Almost immediately after this is the moment when Ronan accepts the albino night horror, symbolically accepting himself as he chooses to let go of his self-hatred and all that (a scene which nearly made me scream out loud on a fully booked airplane).

It is only after these events (with an Adam Moment sandwiched in between them) that Ronan develops his crush on Adam – or, to put it another way, it’s only after these events that Ronan’s POV starts framing his interest in Adam as something potentially romantic.

Basically what I’m saying is that Ronan wasn’t able to properly “like-like” anyone until he was done denying to himself that he’s gay as heck.

BUT obviously the dynamic between Ronan and Kavinsky is more complicated than just that. (It would be great if we’d had a Kavinsky POV chapter, but for some reason he seems to be the only antagonist without one, which bothers me more than a little bit bc it means I have to guess with him). A theme with them is recognition – both street racers, both dreamers, both (presumably?) feeling like the only gay kids in this small Virginia town, both (presumably???) not handling that super well, albeit differently. They’re written to be two sides of the same coin, and to a degree they’re both aware of that.

Racing against Kavinsky thrills Ronan mostly for the adrenaline rush, but you can tell from the text that there’s other stuff mixed in there, and that other stuff isn’t anything Ronan is willing to sort out. They’re not merely “friends,” but… Is he attracted to Kavinsky? Does he have some sort of crush on him? Even Ronan doesn’t know, because prior to that final dreamscape scene, he flat-out refuses to think about it. I think it’s safe to say that a lot of Kavinsky’s actions in the book betray some kind of crush on Ronan, mainly because Kavinsky clearly craves a form of reciprocal recognition from him, but again without a Kavinsky POV chapter I feel like I’m guessing.

Anyways, that’s my interpretation of the text!