#genderhexe

OH GOD I’m glad it’s not just me who thinks that, I just– don’t get it??? I watched all these DVD extras and interviews and they’re so– so–; well a friend of mine said “how can they be such dipshits” and I think that sums it up p. well.

there to support them through and how devastatingly awful that must have been as a mother and how she must feel about having been a prisoner in her subconscious and not being able to go home with her children. I NEED TO TALK ABOUT IT.

SEQUOIA. WHY WOULD YOU. I HAVE BEEN IN DESPAIR ALL DAY TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE THIS WORSE WHAT TO SAY. 

My main question when it comes to the dream beings is always how much of a self they ever get to establish. They’re created purely from imagination or longing or fear or spite. How much love goes into them? With the notable exception of Matthew, who is nothing but loved, but what did the young boy who pulled him from his dreams really understand about personhood? What do any of us understand about it, honestly? What did Niall Lynch understand of it outside of himself? He’s certainly not painted with the most compassionate of brushes. 

So the beings are created. They’re given consciousness of a sort, minds and dreams that the dreamer wanted them or needed them to have. In Aurora’s case Niall needed someone to have a son with, to watch his children while he was away, to be kind and patient and understanding and loving. Whether Aurora was created in love or not, she was certainly created to love. 

And then something catastrophic happens. The creator is gone, the beings sleep. Probably because of the pain the of separation, the existential emptiness that we might like to hope is something only the created have to suffer, but which we know is common. (Which I think Ronan knows is common.) And if a dream goes to sleep, does it go back into the dream? Without the dreamer there to create a place, does the dream get to create their own? Did Aurora go to sleep–or never wake up–that morning and then feel like she woke up and just carried on? Did she make her boys lunches and drag Matthew out of bed and break up a fight for the bathroom between Declan and Ronan and laugh over how they’re just like their father? What has she been living while her boys have been living this tragedy? 

How does one build a world from scratch when they have nothing to pull from? How important are memories to the dream beings? Are they, essentially, the most real of all the thoughts they have? Like, we can argue that perception is reality until they wake the cows up, but it is an unavoidable condition of dream beings that the memories they make are the only parts of them that are related to choice and any sort of freedom. Which is close to the same for all of us, but they’re not generally created with blank slates. Matthew was young enough that we may consider him tabula rasa, but Aurora was older, was meant to be a fully formed person I assume. So there’s a break there between what Niall gave her and what she lived. I wonder if she can tell the difference? I wonder if the walls of her slumber ever shook or felt unreal as her subconscious tried to compensate for that. 

To me the idea that Aurora may have just been in stasis, in darkness, for more than a year while the world went on without her, is terrible. The idea that Aurora had a whole life that she has to learn wasn’t real is tragic. She was created with a singular purpose and she couldn’t fulfill it. And aside from that, she loves her sons and would want to have made things better for them. Feeling helpless in the face of someone you love’s pain is the absolute worst. She has three someones, two of whom are barely on speaking terms anymore, and now that she’s awake she can’t even get to them. She has to haunt the forest until they come to her and only get snatches of life, of their frustrations and hopes. 

And there’s Ronan–basically a man already and looking more like his father every day, with so many cuts and scrapes she can’t kiss away–who is trying so hard to fix it, to take the weight of what Niall did and bear it like he shouldn’t have to. No mother wants her children to have to bear her weight. Does she tell him it’s okay? Does she tell him that he’s alright and that’s what’s most important to her? Does he cry and tell her that he’s not, but that it doesn’t matter because she’s the most important thing to him? Does she run her fingers over the undersides of his wrists with a frown and say I love you over and over, trying to make up for lost time?

And then does she retreat back to wherever her dwelling is when he leaves and try to figure out what to do? She can be anything now. Sure, she’ll always be their mother, but children grow, it’s what they do, and she has no husband. What does she want without Niall there? Is this the first time she’s ever given it a thought? Is there strain in her thought process as she breaks free of what a dream being is meant to be and becomes something else entirely? I don’t think she’s stupid and I don’t think she’s incapable, but I think there are probably some physical and psychological restraints on what she is that have rarely been tested in the way she’s testing them now. 

So she makes a list of things she wants to see and she has Ronan and Matthew tell her all about what they learn in history and literature and she and Ronan keep a list of places to go once he opens up the world for her. Just she and her sons–Declan included if he will. And she kisses her sons on their cheeks and foreheads and hugs them as tight as she can to make up for how tightly they hold her with the very strength of who they are now, who they have to be. Sometimes they stand there for full minutes, neither party willing to pull away. It’s not what she lost, and it’s not what she never knew, but it’s what she has. She was built to be resilient and strong and smart and loyal, because that’s what love is to a Lynch–it’s what it is to Ronan, and he must have learned that somewhere–and she was made to love.