gansey with his journal crammed full of notes about his quest and whelk remembering noah’s handwriting scattered across their notes. their flashy cars. noah coming up with the idea for raven days and gansey being the raven king.

the fact that they both start the series as ghosts, that they have both died and somehow come back but the coming back didn’t fix everything. the fact that they both see something softer in ronan than what is on the surface, the fact that noah can kiss blue because he’s dead and that gansey can’t or he will die. the way gansey says excelsior before they start off and the way noah took the bold first steps into cabeswater.

the way that both of their deaths caused the ley line to stir, the way that both of them lived past those first deaths because of glendower. the way that noah comes back as something other and gansey, though he is perhaps something more real, does as well, and the way they both experience time not quite correctly, not quite linearly.

it’s noah who comments that he was something more when he was alive and gansey not just wanting but needing to find glendower because he feels that there is a hole inside of him. it’s the way that noah thinks that they wouldn’t have liked who he was when he was alive, and the way gansey hates that he can’t stop being a gansey. it’s how very real gansey looks when he’s next to noah.

it’s gansey planning to use glendower to save noah, even though he knows that this is the year he will die. it’s noah using glendower to save gansey, to give him a reason to go on, to meet the people who he will save and who will save him.

the composition leaves their faces out of the frame. the focus is more on what gansey does, rather than what he says, and he is tossing the notes onto adam where he is exposed. (note: in the book, he tosses the book onto a work table, right after feeling guilty and wishing to himself that he could control “the Adam situation.” so, there’s a bit of a visual translation of the internal dynamics here)

these also… the composition choices! the hesitance shown in adam’s caged pose, rather than in a progressive description of him from bottom (rip camo cargo pants) to top (rip coca-cola t-shirt) to show his reluctance to reveal himself (i think the bruise described in the book was worse than what is shown here).

then, gansey literally looking down at adam as he commands him, and continuing to stand over adam as they argue, his back to the viewer. the way their words create the distance between them. the stark differences in how they are positioned. adam on guard and yet with a lean ganseyward, and gansey standing all… cordial.

Then you have Adam who displays no strong desire to change the system and whose only desire is to rise up in that system. He wants to climb the social ladder and assimilate to those of higher social status which is partially why he envies Gansey so much in the beginning because Gansey was born into it. Adam still tries to do this in the dreamer trilogy by essentially pretending to be a Gansey-like figure while at Harvard despite hating it. Eventually, Adam gives up on trying to belong within this higher social class and "climbing the ladder" but then strangely enough becomes a fed, which means just integrating into another form of hierarchy and power structure. And I feel like a more interesting arc would've been rejecting being a part of these societal systems altogether.

Which I suppose now leads us to Ronan who is a literal anarchist. He actually rejects all societal systems and rules and it permeates every aspect of his life. But actually, I shouldn't say all because there is one societal institution which he does enjoy partaking in: religion. With the exception of his catholicism, he does not engage in any other societal institution: education, law, politics. He hates it, in fact, It is antithetical to his being which is what makes his characterization so perfect because of course a gay farmer god would hate oppressive rules and structures (except for religion). That's not even mentioning that he is a canonical ecoterrorist that cost the US government a billion dollars. But what is really interesting about his character (and where his and Blue's political stances differ) is that because he rejects these systems he has no interest or stake in changing them. He'd sooner tear down the system than try to reform it.

this is who you are. to me. for asking. i love (sar)chengsey SO SO BAD. i have made several posts about them across the years including at minimum 5 fics (eg 1, 2) but its like. i ADMIT my favorite version of them requires editing of canon(in that they dated and broke up before TRB) but even if you DONT do that and stick exclusively to whats written:

required reading IMO is specifcally TRK chapters 28, 29, 30, 37, 38, 58, 66. i knowwww we all forget wtf happened in trk but i feel theyre so good for establishing henry as a well rounded character in a subtle and natural way

i will begin this essay by pointing out that henry jokes and wears a 'snazzy' outfit one time which is all fanon cares about BUT he canonically knows way more about the fairy market and declan's history and niall lynch than ANY of the gangsey do. also he got KIDNAPPED and kept in a GRAVE for FIVE ENTIRE DAYS. and has had weapons pointed at him MORE THAN ONCE! (ch37).

^the logo bear is a henry thesis statement. to me. now to the meat of it. gansey and henry are character foils in almost exactly the same way ronan and kavinsky are. (new guy with an established friend group who you see on the fringes abruptly becomes a main character who has one-on-one interactions with a member of the gangsey going through a crisis of self.) henry acknowledges this by pointing out their shared age 10 traumas + their shared tendencies to put themselves into the exact situations they're afraid of (gansey with the outdoors, henry with holes). gansey specifically says that henry is practically his twin,

and smth i find crucial abt chengsey is that henry is the only person who has never needed anything from gansey. gansey who has spent the entirety of his appearance since page one making plans for his own demise, desperately stressed about how people will function without him, what happens to ronan, what happens to noah, what adam's father could do to him, etc. henry is the manic pixie dream girl urging gansey to actually LIVE and not just wait to die.

henry is the only one of the gangsey who fundamentally understands that every side of gansey is gansey. blue likes who he is but hates president cell phone. henry not only sees president cell phone, he breaks through PCP when gansey is IN that mode. it's why gansey's parents like him better than ronan and adam. they'll GET each other in a way that adam or blue or ronan can't share because theyre inherently different in personality & the way theyve been raised. the reason noah goes away when henry enters the situation is because henry/noah functionally fill the same Vibe slot :shrug: there's smth to be said about henry and gansey's individual reactions to having guns pointed at them but this is long enough as is.

one last thing is that henry has been in an enemies-to-friends thing with gansey the whole time. henry was specifically meant to spy on gansey for nefarious reasons but CHOSE to betray his mother and change his mind and choose gansey's friendship. i think it's largely because gansey passed a test of mettle by just. being a good person. and this friendship with henry SAVES HIS LIFE because when everyone else is freaking out, henry says the one thing nobody else realises, the one thing that actually kickstarts gansey's resurrection:

WAIT SORRY ONE LAST EDIT. when i read this at 16 i was like "....hot. will make this my personality now."

at the end of the day, both of these end up being things that don't actually hold them back from kissing: adam isn't upset they're dating (just upset blue and gansey thought they were being sly and didn't trust him with their relationship) and, of course, they had to kiss for the quest to come to the close. but the stakes of having both running parallel to one another develop a layer of secrecy atop the doom. i think this creates a lot of interest because, once fox way understands that gansey is blue's true love, there's not secrecy there. since the curse is well known amongst blue's family, there's not really anything to hide from them, especially since blue knows (and shares) it was gansey she saw on st. marks eve.

therefore, adam's perceived discomfort drives the actual tension for bluesey in the last two books- especially trk. adam's arc gives them a reason they have a reason to keep their romance a secret. this gives a real narrative logic behind the introduction of henry, too: they need a place beyond the core four and their homes (again, accepting, but not really a hot and heavy place for a teen) where they can be into one another and not walk on eggshells or hide their attraction.

but this is why the love V between blue, adam, and gansey works! and is believable! because adam saw himself killing gansey in the tree vision in trb and it's fair for blue to assume, that new to the group, the killing may have been from jealousy (at that point, blue knows gansey is her true love, not adam, but hasn't fallen in love with gansey or been able to see the sides of adam necessary to break up with him). and of course, between that point and the end of the novel, adam frames whelk for murder and becomes the sentient being of a forest. so there are legitimate reasons they wouldn't want to tell adam both based on his actions, but also based on not wanting to hurt a friend. he's powerful, but still able to be hurt- they don't want to hurt or be hurt by him. hence scene in car, hence toga party, my beloveds...