A Kingdom Or This

Honestly, I've fallen into the Declan csa rabbit hole the last time I got sucked into this story and it's criminal how there are only like, three fics (and almost no Declan/Aurora). I mean, have you seen the Lynch family? They're a walking child abuse metaphor no matter how you put it. They're gothic. Even for Ronan there's next to nothing and he's the fandom's sweetheart! It's so disappointing. All this to say that I'd love to hear your thoughts on the topic because your opinions on Declan and the Lynch family are some of the best out there (ps of the few Declan fics on this topics, three are mind blowing, but you probably already know them)

i almost certainly have read them, probably multiple times each, and brother (gender neutral) you will be pleased to hear that i am working on a fourth!!!! posting date TBD but i am tippity tapping away at a csa Declan fic as we speak!!!!

okay so, as i said, i understand where the interpretation of Ronan having been sexually abused by his father comes from. my problem with it is that that interpretation leans a lot on the dreaming itself and the nighthorrors as an expression of trauma, which tbf, the nighthorrors at least very much are!! in isolation, these things make for excellent vehicles to explore the lingering effects of trauma.

however!!

dreaming is also consistently portrayed, series-wide, as very much a positive thing. a thing of beauty and light and a building block for connection and wider community. cabeswater is stunningly beautiful and this pure expression of magic and wonder, and it brings so much comfort to Ronan and joy to all of his friends. it creates baby birds and innocent children and light. Ronan loved to dream of light!!!!

the darkness and horror and damage of Ronan's dreaming comes SPECIFICALLY FROM the repression of it and the shame he was taught to feel by the people around him. it's not an inherent part of his dreaming. when he is allowed to dream openly, it is a beautiful healthy productive thing that creates life and forms connections with others like him.

it's a much better analogy for an inherent quality of Ronan's (like his queerness, as was i think the intended metaphor at least in the first series, or even his neurodivergency) that he was forced to hide and suppress and was taught was wrong by the authority figures in his life. it doesn't sit well with me to ascribe this beautiful inherent generative ability of Ronan's to trauma, as if he can only do these wonders because he was abused, or as if being abused bestowed this power on him somehow. it doesn't feel right to me cross those wires, thematically, when the queer shame metaphor is already so strong and so present and doesn't have the same pitfalls.

i do say again, though, this is personal preference and interpretation only!! i acknowledge that it might be a bit of a doylist vs watsonian issue, like maybe i'm too zoomed in and can't divorce it from its canon minutiae quite enough to appreciate weight of this, and i have full respect for people who do subscribe to or prefer this interpretation. i get it!!! it just doesn't work for me.

(at least, in a canon setting. i'd be happy to have it included in a non-magic AU as a replacement for the dreaming, cuz i think it would carry more weight and make more sense in that context. replacing the trauma done by the repressed dreaming, ie the nighthorrors, with the sexual abuse makes perfect sense in that new context and keeps the continuity of Ronan's character that was shaped so much by trauma and wouldn't make sense without something causing it. i just don't think csa and the dreaming STACK well, if that makes sense, they don't line up well thematically. like, they feel like they sort of fill the same slot. if that makes any sense.)

anyway

as for Declan, i don't feel that sense of dissonance. for Declan, sexual abuse slips in very neatly alongside the other established canonical traumas and it doesn't feel like it contradicts anything either logistically or thematically, because there is no corresponding positive to any of his shit experiences. there's no trade-off of power that makes it feel like some bargain that might arguably be worth it somehow. it's just a slight extension of what's already there. all of the evidence, so to speak, of his victimization is entirely mundane and there's no upside to any of it (except the bullshit "strength" you gain from forcing yourself to survive it).

Declan hates his father, and he misses his father, and he wanted his father to love him so badly, and the way that his father showed his love was a violent age-inappropriate secret that made him feel completely worthless, and it was all just an exhausting grind that's worn him down for his entire life and left him deeply emotionally fragile and with horribly maladaptive coping mechanisms that continue to fuck up his relationships and make it impossible to relate to his brothers properly or cleanly grieve his father's death or think about his mother for more than 3 consecutive seconds.

and that's just the reality of him. that's the reality of it all, topped off with the cherry of (a copy of) his abuser coming back into his life to lovebomb and gaslight him at the last minute, seemingly (imo) with the narrative's backing. it's just such an eerie fucking feeling to end it that way.