Neil: I'm Fine

Hi, just wanted to say your adam parrish meta is fantastic and i love reading it. I was wondering if you have any thoughts about the difference between Adam's reaction to when he thought Gansey paid his rent vs. his reaction (or lack thereof) to Ronan paying it. I feel like it maybe says a lot about his relationship with both of them and how he maybe views their richness differently but idk. I'd like to know what your views on it are though

I think there is no point at which Adam assumes that Ronan Lynch is trying to control him, which is really the difference. 

Adam outright links his father’s control to potential control by Gansey in the first book. He clearly sees how Gansey is different from him socially and what others might take from Gansey offering him assistance: not love, but charity, and charity of a kind that makes Adam one of Gansey’s things. And he seemes to read Gansey’s love in that way too. He doesn’t really give Gansey credit for trying to be a friend until BLLB’s courtroom scene. And I don’t think Adam is 100% wrong? He’s like 75% wrong, but I will give him partial credit because, honestly, Gansey and Control is a thing. every time I’ve suggested that Gansey likes to control his situation and that of those around him, I’ve had people violently react with Gansey is not controlling!!! which, like, okay. He’s not controlling in the way Robert Parrish is controlling. He’s not controlling in the sense of being deliberately manipulative or cruel or getting high off of having power over people’s lives. 

but Gansey absolutely – absolutely and understandably when you think about his background and his upbringing and his trauma – does not want situations to spiral out of his control. To misquote Ronan Lynch in TDT, because he is Gansey, he usually wants all of them there and he wants to be in charge. It’s not malevolent control but it is a desire to make sure his people are safe, to know they are all handling each other appropriately, to trot out logic and rationality and wisdom and all those clear-headed Glendower qualities and use them to make everything right for everyone. Because he loves these people! He loves them and he wants to make the world right for them. Control. you can’t really be a king without it, though maybe he’d like to think he’s a king like the best myths about Glendower and can rule people out of sheer love, idk. 

My point is: I wouldn’t really be surprised if Adam has a hard time telling love and control apart, and I wouldn’t really be surprised if Gansey theoretically can tell the two apart but in practice expresses his love by, like, trying to talk at Adam about what Adam’s experiences are like and very logically delineating the boundaries of Adam’s life in a way you really shouldn’t do with abuse survivors because their right to trust their own impressions >>> your right to love them so hard that you get to be annoyed when they don’t let you dictate how they should be reacting to you.

Gansey clearly never means to come across as controlling to Adam, but he does, and part of that is Adam’s own issues and inability to see genuine friendship, and part of that is that Gansey really does want to control Adam’s life for the better. 

so I don’t even think Adam is kinder to Ronan about it because he loves Ronan more or because Ronan is so super clever about the way he offers help or w/e. I think it’s mostly because Adam hardly sees Ronan as likely to control his life. mind you, this isn’t totally fair to Gansey. Ronan isn’t immune to telling Adam what Adam’s needs are or what Adam should be doing. in BLLB, Ronan tells him to forget Aglionby and college because Adam has a bond with Cabeswater. Adam just dismisses him outright. There’s no agonizing over it; there’s no internal pain over Ronan setting out what Adam should do or Adam becoming one of his things. Adam pretty clearly doesn’t perceive any danger of that with Ronan. Ronan’s not going to try to control the universe to make things better for people. and tbh at several points in the books Adam’s (and a lot of other people’s) perception of Ronan is that Ronan barely makes any effort to control himself. 

The gods are among us. Zeus drinks himself half to death at the bar. He makes bedroom eyes at every pretty girl to walk in the room. They will clutch their cans of mace a little tighter as they walk home tonight. Aphrodite helps a beaten girl to her feet, holding her tight as her young body is racked with sobs. Artemis stands nearby, preparing to hunt the thief of this young girl’s innocence. These are the only hunts she participates in anymore. Athena glares at Ares as bloody knuckles and booted feet connect with battered bodies between them. The fight clubs are their temples now. Dionysus stands behind a bar, serving drinks to rowdy men and pretty girls. Later, he will be found holding back the hair of girls, too young for the drinks they swallowed, as they vomit the concoctions they drank to forget the pain in the world. Dionysus understands and so he drinks more than anyone, if only to forget the suffering that has filled his immortal life. Hestia mourns the numerous broken homes. She puts extra effort in protecting the scant few happy families left. So Hestia has created a home for those lost and abandoned, for she too knows how it feels to be cast out by the family who should have loved you unconditionally. She understands what it feels like to be adrift and homeless. Apollo sits on a busy, crowded street, strumming his guitar and singing a song of loss and pain. He uses poetry and music to mourn the pain in the world. He berates himself constantly, because for every life he saves, ten more are extinguished. He has stopped visiting hospitals because he can’t help but feel his efforts are futile. He hasn’t seen his sister in years, and he misses her most at night, when he can see her beloved stars and moon. Hermes slumps in a chair, exhausted from the horror gracing the human news. He decides he is no longer deserving of the title “messenger of the gods,” since he hasn’t delivered a message in centuries. Not when the gods no longer keep in touch. So he reverts to his favorite pastime: stealing. But what use is mortal money to a god? Hera sits in the shadows of a bar and struggles to summon the dredges of the vindictive, jealous anger that used to come so easily to her when she saw her husband with another woman. Hera thinks that perhaps in this modern world, she would do better as the goddess of divorce. Because, really, how can she profess that marriage is the best gift the world has to offer when she can’t even keep her husband in her bed? When he doesn’t even bother pretending that he loves her? Yes, goddess of failed marriages has such a lovely, miserable ring to it. Poseidon wanders the beach, picking up the scattered trash that poisons his domain. His tears mix with the salt water on his cheeks and he weeps for the suffering of his oceans. He feels the pollution like a phantom pain, and he scoffs at himself, full of loathing for the god of the sea who could not protect his oceans from mortals. Hades lounges in his extravagant mansion, smiling at his lovely wife curled at his side. Blessed is he, for there will always be death, and mortals will always worship his riches. Of all his siblings, Hades, the scorned brother, cursed to rule the underworld, is the only one to still enjoy immortality. Persephone is as beautiful as ever and she is happy with her loving husband who always joins her in her protests, right alongside her as she weeps for for the dying of this earth, as she cries herself to sleep at night when she thinks of all the loss of nature’s beauty and life. This world is suffering and she is the only one to hear its cries. They haunt her dreams. Hecate flips the sign on the window to say closed. She longs for days gone by when people knew the truth. Magic is very real. Instead, she has to smile politely while customers come to her store to purchase items they know not how to use and religious men preach about how witchcraft is a sin, and she will burn in hell. Hecate does not care. She is as immortal as magic. Cupid narrows his eyes with scorn every time he hears the word love fly from the lips of people who do not understand the meaning of the word. Though who is he to judge them when all his matchmaking attempts end in failure. Perhaps the mortals simple do not want him to decide who they love. Perhaps it is their turn to choose. Athena prowls through college campuses, holding signs high in protect with the students around her. These fearless children are her people. She scoffs at the professors who are simply going through the motions, who fail to appreciate the brilliant minds all around them. She never fails to notice. Ares picks his way across a battlefield and finds himself at the ruins of what used to be an elementary school. He no longer understands war, hasn’t for centuries. This was not brave, this was not heroic. This was senseless bloodshed. He sees nothing holy in this ruined world. Aphrodite swallows the bile in her throat as she hears another rapist has been left free. She glares daggers at boys yelling obscene things at women. She’s long stopped romanticizing love. However, sometimes she sees a young girl handing over her baby to an older couple who tried for years, and she remembers what she once represented. Sometimes she sees Ares across the room of soldiers returning from the horrors of war, and as they embrace the loved ones they left behind, she smiles at him. Artemis takes her role as protector of young women seriously. There’s a gun tucked into her waistband and a switchblade in her pocket. She can’t save them all, so she has also become an avenging goddess. She can be found in the streets or at battered women’s shelters, preparing for the next hunt. The gods are dying. The gods wish they were dead. Is immortality a blessing or a curse?

The gods were always too human for their divinity (inspired by the writings of @crossroadsbela )

i can’t get adam parrish: spontaneous sleeper off my mind like…..

adam routinely falling asleep on gansey’s shoulder whenever he sits shotgun in the pig

ronan being put on ‘crash watch’ during latin because everone knows that adam hates sleeping in class but sometimes it just happens

(crash watch includes taking adam’s notes, waking him up ~gently~, and being a good boyf)

adam and persephone having naps in cabeswater after he finishes his training for the day

sometimes blue encourages adam to sleep when they hang out. usually he ends up sprawled over her lap and snoring loudly as she watches sitcoms, and usually orla or persephone document it in the form of like 60 pictures

blue had one printed and taped to her wall

noah and adam staying up late and talking and talking until they end up cuddled on adam’s bed (adam is lil’ spoon ofc)

adam sleeping in the hondayota during his breaks 

ronan and adam staying up studying for finals and adam eventually slumping over and crashing on ronan’s lap (ronan’s face is so red google earth can see him through the roof of st. agnes)

“I heard a dark prediction rising in my own body.”

— Louise Glück, excerpt of Saint Joan (via antigonick)

Judge magazine, 1921

i’m so yikes at all the people praising @maggie-stiefvater for the lgbt ship being treated ~so well~ in trk just bc…. the lgbt characters weren’t killed off or turned into trees, and that’s just….. so sad.

as if pynch wasn’t completely treated as an afterthought, because they totally were. their scenes were super short and had no dialogue whatsoever, nor did they have any sort of confession of feelings or clear confirmation of their relationship while the hets got clear i love you’s and official declarations of their relationship to literally everyone and unnecessary drama……….. like i’m super happy that they’re both alive and happy and together and have a little hooved daughter that they love but. 

that shouldn’t be our standard. it’s mostly just sad that our expectations are that low that we’re praising an author for sidelining the lgbt ship and treating them nowhere near as well as the straight ship. and again so much of pynch was subtext and extremely subtle stuff that you have to read in between the lines, as it has been since the beginning. 

and i don’t even blame any lgbt people for being happy about it bc we’re used to being treated so awfully that we’re basically ecstatic about getting just scraps bc well, it could be so much worse. but stief is nowhere near revolutionary and actually giving good and equal representation and we deserve better (and any straight people praising it just need to shut up, thanks). 

i mean, if you can say one positive thing about it, it’s that the two lgbt characters got the strongest and most intricate individual arcs, but as a ship they were absolutely sidelined and underwhelming after all the hype and build up. 

monica tomas @ wilhelmina

hi imagine adam and ronan getting into a fight where adam storms out of monmouth and gansey calls him hours later like “can you please come do something with your boyfriend?” and in the background he can hear the clutter of noah and ronan making a makeshift band out of crap around monmouth and playing blink 182′s I Miss You

The Mirror

The Seeker

The Magician

The Dreamer

The Ghost

THE GANGSEY

ok so i made the mistake of standing on the beach in the dark and listen…….. listen. there is nothing that cares about you less than the ocean in the dead of night. it is tangible. you can’t fuckin see a thing. there is no horizon. it’s a ceaseless void and she cares for no one and loves nothing. you have to respect her bcs she clearly has no fuckin love for you and if she wanted she could take you and NO ONE WOULD KNOW