Adam The Raven Cycle Headcanons
I think we all underestimate how much Adam’s rural poverty affects his looks and history, especially towards the beginning of the series.
1. Rural Appalachians often have mostly British ancestry. The British often have narrow mouths that are prone to overcrowding. This sort of problem takes money to fix. Therefore, Adam probably did not have nice teeth at the beginning of the series. He might be fixing it as an adult in college, but that really depends on how much money he has and/or is willing to throw at it right now. He may smile close-lipped a lot, or has the urge to cover his mouth with his hand. They might be yellowish, they might be crooked, he could have an under or overbite.
2. Adam most likely kept his hair really short for a good amount of his life, because lice. And/or, he had a mullet at one point, just because they’re good at keeping hair out of your face if done well, and keeps your neck warm when it’s cold. This practice likely changed once he entered Aglionby for fitting in purposes, but yeah. He may have mustache, if he can grow one (I don’t remember), because that’s very popular for young men in the South. And certainly taking scissors to it to ‘style’ it occasionally is cheaper than buying razors all the time. There’s a good chance he cuts all of his hair.
3. His hands are likely still calloused from all his jobs. It’s said in the books his hands are dry and cracked, and that he used to lick them to try and soothe them. Maybe he bought lotion once in a moment of ‘weakness’ (because he doesn’t want to waste money) and his friends top it off occasionally and hope he doesn’t notice it’s a different color or smell. Because he’s not going to buy more.
4. He’s either a huge neat freak or genuinely doesn’t know a lot about cleaning. That’s how you cope if you live in a trailer year round. You either keep everything as neat as possible, looking cleaning tips like a bored housewife. Or you leave crumbs and cooking scraps because having roaches in your kitchen is just a part of life.
5. I’m going to do some math, skip down to END OF MATH if you don’t care :/
Virginia’s minimum wage in 2012, when the books started being published, was $7.25. If Adam SOLELY used the money from his jobs for the reminder of his tuition ($18,423), that means he had to work 2,541 hours and 7 minutes a year to make that money. Let’s round that up to 2700 because he might need schoolbooks or food or occasionally pay for transportation.
Considering he has to make $18,423 a year, he’s skirting the next tax bracket pretty close *unless* he is working under the table. Since it’s already crazy that he’s doing this shit, let’s assume he’s working under the table. Because otherwise this gets even more miserable. In any case, if he needs to work 2700 hours to make it, he‘ll end up grossing $19,575.
Average American summer is about 8 weeks. So if transportation to each job is 45 minutes, including getting up and ready, etc, because of weather and iffy transportation options, and let’s say he’s working two shifts at two jobs, maybe eating lunch during work or transportation, that means if he allowed himself 6 hours of sleep a night during the summer, he would be ‘transporting’ 2.25 hours a day (I’m going to round it up to 2.5 to account for lunch and to make it easier), that’s a 15.5 hour day.
7 days a week times 15.5 hours times eight weeks is 868 hours, he’s made $6,293 out of the $19,575 needed. Leaving $13,282 to make.
Winter break is about 2 weeks in southern states like Virginia. A week for Spring. Three weeks. Assuming he can get similar hours at his jobs as he did in the summer, that’s 325.5 hours, and $2359.875. I’m going to round it down to $2359. So now he *just* needs to make $10,923 (lol).
Now, using those season break numbers, that leaves 41 weeks in a year for school. However, the average school week is 5 days, and school years in VA are 180 days. So if there never were any holidays and snow days, etc, school would take 36 weeks to complete.
In the interest of not going crazy, let’s work with the average school week of 5 days and say there’s 36 of those. I’m sure Adam worked holidays, but this will roughly amount to the same thing.
I think I remember Adam did early morning shifts and pulled 16 hours on the weekends during the schoolyear. So we’ll work that into his average school day.
Adam still needs to make $10,923. If he works 15.5 hours on a weekend day (using the same numbers as the summer calculations)(Saturday and Sunday that’s two days) for 36 weeks, that’s $8,091 out of the $10,923. That kid works to the bone. Leaving just $2,832 to make to reach that necessary minimum.
$2,832 comes out to about 390 hours and 37 minutes left needed to work. Let’s round it to 391.
That means if spread out over 36 weeks, he needs to work 10 hours and 52 minutes a week. Let’s bring it up to 11 hours.
The average high school day is 7.5 hours, including lunch. So that leaves 16.5 hours in Adam’s weekday.
HOWEVER. He still needs to do schoolwork. The average American teen spends 3.5 hours of time on schoolwork. I think Adam could probably power through it, and not really get distracted like ya girl but also it’s a private school and he’s taking all the hard classes. And hard classes like to pile shit on. So let’s go with 3.5 hours, every weekday. Yes he skips school for injuries a lot, maybe he gets more schoolwork done or job work done during that time. That’s harder to account for.
So that leaves 13 hours for non school activities.
He likely works in 2-3 shifts to cover the eleven hours each week, or maybe it depends on the week - maybe this week he has to work all 5 mornings, maybe the next week he works none. But let’s assume he splits it over all five days for averages sake. That means that 11 hours a week is 2 hours and 12 minutes a day (let’s bring it up to 15 minutes.). So 2.25 hours. Meaning he now has 10.75 hours left in the day.
Assuming transportation including getting ready and going to bed etc is as usual 45 minutes, that means he’s going to work, to school, to home every day. That’s another 2.25 hours. Now he has 8.5 hours left in the day.
Let’s assume he dedicates one third of his available weekday hours to friends. At 8.5 hours for non school non work non homework non transportation time, that means he spends 2 hours and 50 minutes with friends. Let’s round it to 3 hours. Because having fun with friends really does take that kind of time! And he’s really close with those peeps.
That means he’s getting at most 5.5 hours of sleep on the weekdays.
I don’t remember if he works like this *throughout* all the first series’ books or just the first book. But your boy is tired as fuck. His skin is terrible. His eyebags have eyebags. He probably has a lot of wrinkles and grime under his nails. And he’s going to look even more haggard after ‘breaks’ and on Mondays especially.
I don’t remember how he affords that apartment in later books.
In any case, our boy does not look well at all.
6. This is going to fuck him up severely once he hits college too. I don’t remember if he got loans or scholarships or what. But even if he got a full ride, he’s going to be recovering sleep and health wise for years to come. He probably struggles to eat a salad sometimes. He needs to, for sure, but it’s so outside his taste buds’ usual range and his wallet’s usual range. And no one ever helped him figure out what dressing or vinaigrette made it tolerable for him. That boy has been living on canned food sales and ramen forever. He might get a meal plan and get sick from trying new foods or still act like he’s paying for each piece of food at the grocery store.
7. Very good chance he’s a coupon clipper and still has a little trouble convincing himself that he doesn’t need to buy 6 cans of beans just because they’re $5 all together. Instead of the just one can that he needs this week.
