ronan’s loneliness is like there is no one like me so I will never be understood and therefore loved and hennessy’s loneliness is like there have literally been a dozen people exactly like me but that hasn’t made me any easier to love. ronan is like if I let people close enough they will discover how alien and unbearable I am and run away and hennessy is like if I let people close enough I will have to face myself and I am terrified of what I might find. both of them together is like I recognize my shame in you which for ronan means maybe me being different was never the problem and for hennessy means maybe I’m not as horrible as I feared. hand in unlovable hand etc
something about this passage. not just bryde’s assertion of feelings as ronan’s dream power, (and art as hennessy’s, despite her thinking she’s worthless at dreaming), but the combination of these specific things, mirrors plus feelings plus art plus weapons. bryde is obsessed with this idea of re-defining reality (possibly to cope with the fact that he himself is not real but that’s another post), and these dream niches he’s listed could all be thought of as the ways each of the dreamer’s chosen method of reality creation, and how that reflects what they want and how they see the world.
rhiannon sees the good in everyone and wants a world where everyone is kind to themselves, so she dreams mirrors that show you the kindest version of reality.
ronan’s reality is created based on feelings - he dreamt matthew because he wanted a brother who showed him the love declan couldn’t, all of his weirdest and worst dreams fuck with feelings in some way, like the dreamt security system, the fact that he’s willing to go through it every day, the dreamt tamquam wheels and how he’s obsessed with adam not texting back, I think deep down what he wants is a world where people are honest about how they feel (even if he would never admit that to himself).
hennessy sees the world through the eyes of an artist, seeing the essence of everything, the story beyond the picture, incorporating emotional truths with physical truths so that through art reality becomes more of itself, and by doing so reaches its potential so that it is also better than its orginal self, and the fact that when she looked in rhiannon’s mirrors she saw jordan, who she believes is the better version of herself, and the lace being associated with feelings that represent what she thinks is the worst of herself, and the worst thing that the lace can do being to see her… it’s like all she wants is a world where being seen is not equated with being bad.
and bryde…. dreams weapons, because his chosen form of creation is destruction. he is a product of the fury in ronan and the fury of nature and the dying ley lines, the collective fury of a world drained of magic. he wants justice, anarchy, a world restored to natural purity, and represents the part of ronan that will do anything to create a world he can belong in. and also wants, probably, a little revenge.
what do all of these have in common? there’s a deep longing for realness, authenticity, belonging. mirrors show you a version of what reality is; art shows you reality’s potential. feelings show you truths you can’t admit to yourself and weapons force you to face them. there’s a constant reckoning between what is vs what is wanted vs what is possible vs what can be made possible by wanting. hope is not just a feeling, it’s a weapon and a paintbrush and a mirror. it destroys and it creates and it reveals.
THE THING IN THE FOREST: DRAMATIC MEDIATIONS ON GREYWAREN CHARACTERS
I am Declan Lynch. I am the boy erased by purposeful blandness, the boy who crafted a mask so thoroughly it became him. I am the boy who hides his soul in the attic full of paintings and the fancy shoes he can’t seem to convince himself not to wear, despite how hard he tries. I am the brother who committed to staying safe by becoming nothing, unnoticeable, unremarkable, afraid that if too much space is taken up by something like a personality there will be knives at my throat and nightmares I can’t even imagine. I am the brother who had to be responsible, because no one else would, the one who continued to play the part even when my insides were breaking again and again and again and again and again.
I am Adam Parrish. I am the boy with insatiable ambition, desperate to rewrite his past. I am the boy that feels unknowable. I am the boy playing life like a strategy game, unconcerned about who I have to lie to or what rules I have to break. I am the boy who believes helplessly that if I can just get somewhere, if I can just make something of my life, if I can become some picture of success then maybe all that pain could be worth it. I am the boy who can’t allow the reality of myself to be held by more than one person. I am the boy who tries to convince himself not to love and fails miserably. I am the boy who collects crying friends, the boy with the quiet otherworldly power only few seem to understand. I am the uncanny stranger next to you. I am the outsider in every room. I am desperate to belong to a world not made for me.
I am Ronan Lynch. I am the car crash you can’t stop happening. I am everyone’s problem they don’t know how to solve. I am the disaster in your dorm room. I am the thing that wakes with my rage in my hands. I am the brooding misunderstood teenager, I am the young boy who is lonely. I am the soft and fragile thing hidden in glares and snarls. I am the thing in the shape of a human longing desperately to be real. I am the thing with too many feelings. I don’t know how to survive in this world. I don’t know how to be complete in the other. I am the thing that loves fiercely, I am the thing terrified of my hugeness and my smallness both, because neither have given me a place to belong. I am the god dreaming of being a baby dreaming of being a god.
I am Jordan Hennessy. I am the girl who runs from her own mirror, and yet finds herself surrounded by it everywhere she turns. I am the girl who cannot help but re-create herself, again and again and again, hoping that at least one version will turn out better than the original, or at least stay alive long enough to find out. I am the girl with the void inside of her big enough to destroy the world. I am the girl who’s first experience of love came from the act of painting over her mother’s horrible portrait of a daughter she did not bother to know. I am the girl who hates herself, but I am also the girl brave enough to love herself even when she is terrified of what loving herself might mean, and not knowing if it will ever be possible for her to love or be loved by anyone else. I am the explosion of words in the room, I am the car crash that happened on purpose. I am the artist who dreams while awake.
I am the other Jordan Hennessy. I am the girl who’s never had her own life. I am a girl made of dreams with dreams of her own she’s not allowed to have. I am the girl that stays awake only by the ceaseless and restless pursuit of art that is bigger than reality. I am the girl with lost memories. I am the girl with no option but to create her future, because her past was never truly hers.
I am Carmen Farooq-Lane. I am the woman who gave her life to a cause that betrayed her. I am the woman with blood on her hands. I am the woman who learned to control herself because she couldn’t control her volatile brother, and someone had to be controlled. I am the woman who must keep herself together, no matter what it takes, no matter what she loses, I am the woman who can’t seem to stop what she is desperately trying to stop, what we all know is coming. I am the woman with the apocalypse inside her.
I am Matthew Lynch. I am the golden child, the easy one, the one that everyone loves simply because I am good, because there is nothing about me to suggest any wrongness. I am the brother who isn’t real. I am the boy who does not know himself, because all he has been is what was dreamt into him, what he has allowed others to shape him into. I am the boy who tries to fight his brightness in rebellion. I am the boy who can’t help but make others smile anyway.
I am the being known as Bryde. I am the ancient voice in the forest that just appeared yesterday. I am the disdainful hawkish man who believes the world is killing him and killing itself. I am the guy who is mostly right, but is wrong in the ways that matter. I am the one who does not know if he can trust what he knows. I am the angst of a teenage boy and the wisdom of a god and the longing of a revolution. I am the one who does not know if there is anything left worth saving.
I am Liliana the Visionary. I am the maiden, the mother and the crone. I am the human volcano; I am the woman who must erupt to stay alive. I am the woman who chooses her own life, no matter the destruction it causes. I am the woman who believes despite everything that it will all work out. I am the woman with the sound of all her years within her. I am the woman who refuses to keep it all in.
I am Mór Ó Corra. I am the woman who can’t help but dream pain into everything she touches. I too am afraid of the thing in the forest. I too wonder if it was a mistake to bring it to life.
I am Niall Lynch. I am the father with a heart bigger than his brain. I too want to love the thing I’m afraid of. I too want desperately to make it human.
I am the Lace. I am the dark mirror you do not want to face. I am the dream where you can’t wake up. I am the dream where it was all your fault. I am the dream of the world without magic. I am the thing that shows you what you already feared. I am the shadow of the world that will not stop until the world faces itself. I am the voice you already know.
I am the Greywaren. I am the thing in the forest, the thing beyond worlds, choosing life, again and again and again. I am the thing that belongs nowhere and everywhere. I am the thing that talks to you in your dreams. I am the power of possibility. I am the bravery of deciding what to make real, what to love, what to become. I am the thread of magic that connects us all. I am the end in the beginning in the end.
