#ronessy

THAT WOULD BE SO FUNNY

But I do think it’s very odd when people say that fic writers are erasing the sexualities of queer people... when they write those queer people as straight in fan fic.

1) Fic doesn’t have more power than living canon. By living, I mean... the author is still alive and still involved in the world. A century hasn’t passed. And most fan fiction doesn’t get published and when it is, it’s usually (usually) not associated with or contradictory to the canon that inspired it. What’s in the original canon text is what most people are going to go by - at least, in terms of what can’t be disputed. Ronan Lynch is a gay man, according to The Dreamer Trilogy. Maggie Stiefvater is a living, breathing author, who is active on social media and engages with fans of her works. No amount of Ronan/Hennessy fan fiction is going to remove Ronan Lynch’s sexuality. A) Because most people in the fandom don’t ship it and B) Ronan is canonically gay, explicitly stated in the sequel trilogy, and adequately described as such in the original series.

2) This isn’t a case where fic has more power than canon because of the reasons stated above (and even in the few cases where fic does have a lot of power... whether it’s more accepted than canon, etc, is debatable: remember, fan fiction is a very small part of fandom overall; it’s easy for us to get wrapped up in our bubbles of like minds and think everyone else thinks like us but the reality is, they don’t.) Most people who read TRC/TDT will never read fan fiction of it.

3) Fic is not just for those wanting to expand canon but also for people wanting to explore different ideas and scenarios that could never happen in canon (to state the obvious). This means a whole lot of things and yeah, I feel like I have to say this even though it ought to be obvious... but this doesn’t just mean fluffy AUs featuring canonical pairings or AUs where everyone is queer. Sometimes, people do explore other directions. And sometimes, those directions are going to seem weird, problematic, wrong, whatever to you. And sure, maybe some are problematic (AO3 allows snuff RPF, for example, which I’d never read but I will defend the rights of those who write it). But that doesn’t mean that anything written is going to hurt what’s in the canonical texts.

4) I haven’t seen any of the Ronanessy or Ronessy shippers being aggressive or problematic. They aren’t forcing anyone to ship what they ship. They aren’t shoving it in your faces. They aren’t telling you it’s absolutely canon and if you don’t believe that, GTFO. They’re discussing it amongst their circle of shippers/followers and writing fic. They’re a minority. The majority of fics in TRC/TDT on AO3 is still overwhelmingly Pynch. Gay Ronan ain’t going anywhere. His sexuality has not been magically erase by a group of people playing around in the Stiefvater sandbox.

5) Contrary to some beliefs on here, people can write whatever they want and should be allowed to write whatever they want. And you’re allowed to dislike it. But you’re not allowed to tell people what they can or can’t write. And you’re not allowed to bully people who write ships you don’t like (I am not saying that anyone on here in the TRC/TDT fandom is doing that! But I’ve seen it happen in other fandoms to some awful extents).

6) Ronan Lynch will always be gay in canon. Unless a hundred years from now, the word “gay” means something other than “one who prefers to pursue intimate relations with others of the same sex/gender only” (or whatever the actual wording is), or all canon texts and data about canon is purged from our world, Ronan Lynch will remain gay historically. This shouldn’t even be a concern on anyone’s radar. Someone shipping Ronessy really shouldn’t earn anything more than a shrug and a “not my cuppa tea but to each their own” or for the more curious “thats a rare ship, what draws you to it?”