Hi! You do not have to answer this question if you don't want to, but I was curious why you chose to portray Niall as an abuser in Tenebroso. There is no CSA in canon, so I wonder how you came to that? No pressure to reply :)
hi sure complicated question but definitely worth answering.
it's my opinion there is actually subtext in canon to support this (this being: ronan as a victim of csa). other people have talked about this, i know i'm not the first to think this and i won't be the last. i don't remember specifically which authors/bloggers have discussed it, but it's an interpretation of canon that i've definitely seen before.
when i first read the books as they were released, that's what i thought ronan's Deal was going to be; like i remember genuinely thinking that's where the author was going with it, and i turned out to be wrong, but the subtext is there.
this portrayal isn't based on things we know about niall (since we don't really know that much about niall tbh), but instead, it's based on things we know about ronan. some examples:
- something bad happens to ronan at night that he's not allowed to talk about
- ronan's father refuses to explain or educate him regarding what is happening to him at night
- he is isolated from the outside world by virtue of his "secret" and by nature of his upbringing
- he has fraught relationships with his siblings, particularly the older sibling, who "knew" about "the secret" and was not as understanding/helpful as ronan might have liked/needed regarding "the secret"
- he's weirdly attached to his father and holds him in strangely reverent regard
- he's an alcoholic, has a tendency to self-harm, he acts out for attention, is depressed, misanthropic, and "othered" from his peers
- nightmares/sleep related trauma/sleep paralysis/kills himself in his dreams/monsters appear to him in his dreams and hurt him
- he has a pretty notable reaction to adam's choice of material for the greenmantle plot; csa is the absolute worst thing adam could think to pin on this guy, and ronan is (in my opinion) triggered by it
- he hates himself/sees himself as "wrong" or "alien"
- he is destructive towards his personal property and is triggered when he returns to his childhood home/is reminded of specific things that took place in his house
- he has a deep seated compulsion/desire to please/conform/succeed
- unable to attach/bond in a healthy/regulated manner
- strange relationship with his brother, particularly interesting is that he often refers to them as a married set of parents; he refers to himself as "daddy" and himself and his brother as "mommy and daddy"
- he has a problem with authority, specifically with male figures of authority, especially those who try to "parent" or "teach" him
all of these things are not necessarily ironclad, but i spent a lot of time discussing this with @neurosses at the time of writing, trying to decide if this was a path i wanted to take or an interpretation of ronan & niall that i felt was correct, so possibly she will have something to add since this is a topic we discussed/hashed out/worked to ground in canon.
i have said before that it's my belief if you are taking away ronan's magic, you have to give him something else; there must be a wound of some sort. this doesn't HAVE to be child abuse, but if you remove the aspect of magic from the things i listed above, you have a pretty solid foundation for an alternative interpretation of his canonical trauma.
specifically regarding tenebroso, i chose not to give declan that shared experience, but there is some basis for it regarding declan as well:
- niall turned him into his "work wife" when his own wife left/his dream wife wasn't designed to be smart/useful/a true equal
- he is parentified, almost by force (assigned guardian in the will)
- strained relationship with his siblings, particularly the one that still genuinely loves their father/doesn't see father's faults
- bears resentment towards younger sibling that he perceives was "preferred" or the favorite based on the attention paid to him by their father
i don't expect everyone to agree with me and i don't expect this interpretation to become widely accepted, but i do believe there is basis for it in canon (the entire lynch clan has serious Gothic Family vibes but that's a whole 'nother essay), and i really am not sure i have anything else to say about it; it is easier for me to explore these things in fiction/character study than it is for me to sit and expound upon it through meta. so i hope this is a satisfactory answer for you!
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