ren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
necessarian) wrote2019-12-07 12:19 pm
necessarian) wrote2019-12-07 12:19 pm
Entry tags:
HRHGHHGHHH
i haven't read call down the hawk yet but there are spoilers here anyway because i'm the kind of person who spoils myself on purpose sometimes
all i'm saying is, if i were maggie stiefvater, and i had written gansey longing to be more like adam, and adam literally pretending to be gansey in his new life at college, i would simply LET THEM DATE.
anyway, i have mixed feelings about wanting to read this book. on the one hand, declan "percy weasley" lynch is a major character in it, and we all know how i feel about the declan/percy archetype. on the other hand, i have to sit through more ronan, and... idk you guys, he just didn't do it for me. i know i seem like the biggest hypocrite right now, because i wrote a whole bunch of pynch back in the day, but look: pynch is important. they're a canon gay couple in a young adult series! it's nice to bond with people over a ship like that, and it's fun to write as part of a community. also, adam is my favourite, and i was happy to write shippy fic featuring him. i'm still particularly fond of a couple of my old pynch fics, too, especially "maybe i dreamt you." i'm glad i wrote all that stuff, and had that fandom experience, but moving on is okay, too.
well, and, sorry to be a bit of a grinch... but i don't actually think adam and ronan's relationship is. shall we say. particularly well-written. i love how MS writes, even when it's over-the-top with purple, and i love how the two of them are introduced as friends. they complement each other well: the poor kid trying to act like he's rich, and the rich kid ratbag. they're both messy in interesting ways, which i can happily acknowledge even though ronan is not a character i have a whole lot of interest in. (that's a me thing.)
anyway, here's a quick list of reasons i changed my opinion on pynch after the initial joy of bonding over a ship with friends & fandom at large:
1) ronan's crush on adam is, initially, only present in his interior monologue. it's really good there! but there's nothing in his actions until after his crush is made explicit.
2) adam doesn't really seem to ever... like like ronan. i enjoy their dynamic as friends! but adam is just like oh, okay, i'm bisexual, and this guy is interested in me, i guess he can be my boyfriend. sorry to anyone who had a more sympathetic reading than i... that's just how it came across to me. adam had his own arc, and it was spectacular, but everything about his relationship with ronan felt a little... rote. (MS has said ronan is her favourite character in the series, and unlike when JKR said remus lupin is one of hers, it shows.)
3) cool, they're endgame! again, really important in terms of representation. but what cheeses me off about this is it means adam will always have to come back to henrietta. adam's whole arc is about wanting to escape, wanting to find a world beyond "destiny" and the way class stratification in america has dealt him a particular lot in life. ronan is a farm boy, his life is tied to henrietta. sure, adam gets to go away to college and that's nice, but he's ultimately going to return to the place he wanted to escape. i don't know if that counts as "healing" but i, personally, don't like it.
4) i am deeply squicked by hoof child opal, i do not like humans with animal characteristics. (i can deal w/ stuff like mermaids and selkies because they're not meant to be part of the human world but opal is just like... okay now ronan has a child but she can't go to school because she has FUCKING HOOVES.) it has also been pointed out that this puts pynch into the "gay couple are legitimate now that they're raising a child" trope category, and i... do not like that. i don't like that having to raise a child together might be something that keeps adam and ronan together, don't like that reasoning. (again, i have not read CDTH, so idk how far this is explored, if at all. but the vibes, man.)
5) "if you like gansey so much, why don't you kiss HIM?" blue was right. adansey is really good and i regret not latching onto it sooner. like i read the books knowing pynch was going to become canon, and in this case my penchant for spoiling myself... actually did spoil me. i was like "this is canon, therefore i have to like it." it was only taking stock of things afterwards that i realised the real love story, the kind that worked for ME, had been there all along, and it was between two characters who ended up in relationships with someone else. look, i ship rarepairs, that's the life i've chosen. i DO feel bad about not liking pynch, mainly because i think it's still good representation, however you slice it. and it's canon! canon slash ships are so rare, why can't i like it!!! but in my mind there exists this grand rewrite that i'll never write where adam DOES kiss gansey. sorry blue and ronan and to a lesser extent henry who also has off-the-charts sexual tension with gansey.
... oh my god, does this make me a pynch anti? LOL
i'm sorry for being so obnoxious. i really do love TRC, for all its flaws. but i'm also glad i finally got all this off my chest on the internet. (as opposed to yelling about it with my housemate, who thankfully feels the same, though doesn't have strong feelings about adansey like i do apart from agreeing it's the better option.)
anyway, back to call down the hawk. the point is i'm torn about whether or not i'll read it, because i don't know if i can subject myself to more of adam being ronan's kind caring mandatory boyfriend. apparently he has a small subplot but the part that hit me in the chest was hearing he's pretending to be gansey, like, oh my god, he still isn't over his crush?? HELLO???? are we SEEING this? why would you put that in there if not for them to KISS??????? it's a sorry state that i now care more about this imaginary relationship than the canon story, but here we are.
i don't know. i want to read it for declan. i want to read about adam having fun at harvard, living his dream. i just don't want to have to trick myself into caring about his relationship with ronan, for a second time. you know? scared i'll get caught up and start liking it again, when i've now formed such strong attachment to adansey. YES i know you're allowed to multiship but i don't play like that all the time, and anyway i have no particular love for gansey and blue's relationship, so i just... i prefer it my way...
jeez, not liking a canon ship is so complicated, i'm glad this happens to me so seldom. i can't think of another situation where i've felt so strongly that canon robbed me of the superior ship. this is so sad... alexa play the murder squash song
all i'm saying is, if i were maggie stiefvater, and i had written gansey longing to be more like adam, and adam literally pretending to be gansey in his new life at college, i would simply LET THEM DATE.
anyway, i have mixed feelings about wanting to read this book. on the one hand, declan "percy weasley" lynch is a major character in it, and we all know how i feel about the declan/percy archetype. on the other hand, i have to sit through more ronan, and... idk you guys, he just didn't do it for me. i know i seem like the biggest hypocrite right now, because i wrote a whole bunch of pynch back in the day, but look: pynch is important. they're a canon gay couple in a young adult series! it's nice to bond with people over a ship like that, and it's fun to write as part of a community. also, adam is my favourite, and i was happy to write shippy fic featuring him. i'm still particularly fond of a couple of my old pynch fics, too, especially "maybe i dreamt you." i'm glad i wrote all that stuff, and had that fandom experience, but moving on is okay, too.
well, and, sorry to be a bit of a grinch... but i don't actually think adam and ronan's relationship is. shall we say. particularly well-written. i love how MS writes, even when it's over-the-top with purple, and i love how the two of them are introduced as friends. they complement each other well: the poor kid trying to act like he's rich, and the rich kid ratbag. they're both messy in interesting ways, which i can happily acknowledge even though ronan is not a character i have a whole lot of interest in. (that's a me thing.)
anyway, here's a quick list of reasons i changed my opinion on pynch after the initial joy of bonding over a ship with friends & fandom at large:
1) ronan's crush on adam is, initially, only present in his interior monologue. it's really good there! but there's nothing in his actions until after his crush is made explicit.
2) adam doesn't really seem to ever... like like ronan. i enjoy their dynamic as friends! but adam is just like oh, okay, i'm bisexual, and this guy is interested in me, i guess he can be my boyfriend. sorry to anyone who had a more sympathetic reading than i... that's just how it came across to me. adam had his own arc, and it was spectacular, but everything about his relationship with ronan felt a little... rote. (MS has said ronan is her favourite character in the series, and unlike when JKR said remus lupin is one of hers, it shows.)
3) cool, they're endgame! again, really important in terms of representation. but what cheeses me off about this is it means adam will always have to come back to henrietta. adam's whole arc is about wanting to escape, wanting to find a world beyond "destiny" and the way class stratification in america has dealt him a particular lot in life. ronan is a farm boy, his life is tied to henrietta. sure, adam gets to go away to college and that's nice, but he's ultimately going to return to the place he wanted to escape. i don't know if that counts as "healing" but i, personally, don't like it.
4) i am deeply squicked by hoof child opal, i do not like humans with animal characteristics. (i can deal w/ stuff like mermaids and selkies because they're not meant to be part of the human world but opal is just like... okay now ronan has a child but she can't go to school because she has FUCKING HOOVES.) it has also been pointed out that this puts pynch into the "gay couple are legitimate now that they're raising a child" trope category, and i... do not like that. i don't like that having to raise a child together might be something that keeps adam and ronan together, don't like that reasoning. (again, i have not read CDTH, so idk how far this is explored, if at all. but the vibes, man.)
5) "if you like gansey so much, why don't you kiss HIM?" blue was right. adansey is really good and i regret not latching onto it sooner. like i read the books knowing pynch was going to become canon, and in this case my penchant for spoiling myself... actually did spoil me. i was like "this is canon, therefore i have to like it." it was only taking stock of things afterwards that i realised the real love story, the kind that worked for ME, had been there all along, and it was between two characters who ended up in relationships with someone else. look, i ship rarepairs, that's the life i've chosen. i DO feel bad about not liking pynch, mainly because i think it's still good representation, however you slice it. and it's canon! canon slash ships are so rare, why can't i like it!!! but in my mind there exists this grand rewrite that i'll never write where adam DOES kiss gansey. sorry blue and ronan and to a lesser extent henry who also has off-the-charts sexual tension with gansey.
... oh my god, does this make me a pynch anti? LOL
i'm sorry for being so obnoxious. i really do love TRC, for all its flaws. but i'm also glad i finally got all this off my chest on the internet. (as opposed to yelling about it with my housemate, who thankfully feels the same, though doesn't have strong feelings about adansey like i do apart from agreeing it's the better option.)
anyway, back to call down the hawk. the point is i'm torn about whether or not i'll read it, because i don't know if i can subject myself to more of adam being ronan's kind caring mandatory boyfriend. apparently he has a small subplot but the part that hit me in the chest was hearing he's pretending to be gansey, like, oh my god, he still isn't over his crush?? HELLO???? are we SEEING this? why would you put that in there if not for them to KISS??????? it's a sorry state that i now care more about this imaginary relationship than the canon story, but here we are.
i don't know. i want to read it for declan. i want to read about adam having fun at harvard, living his dream. i just don't want to have to trick myself into caring about his relationship with ronan, for a second time. you know? scared i'll get caught up and start liking it again, when i've now formed such strong attachment to adansey. YES i know you're allowed to multiship but i don't play like that all the time, and anyway i have no particular love for gansey and blue's relationship, so i just... i prefer it my way...
jeez, not liking a canon ship is so complicated, i'm glad this happens to me so seldom. i can't think of another situation where i've felt so strongly that canon robbed me of the superior ship. this is so sad... alexa play the murder squash song