#trca meta

I love that second "all casual," it says so much. The text tells us nothing about Adam's feelings, but through this repetition is comparing him to Ronan. Ronan who has just been displayed to us as a liar. Ronan, implicitly, is not actually feeling casual about it, and through a simple repetition of that we also learn how Adam is feeling about it too.

This moment just kills me. Gansey is going to die and Adam is being possessed by a demon and he's just desperately trying to comfort Ronan. Gansey knows it's not real, Adam of all people certainly doesn't believe it. But he wants Ronan to.

It's insane how aware of himself Adam is with Blue with things as simple as not holding her hand too tight, and then to compare it to like. Just how free and out of his head he is whenever he's with Ronan.

I love this passage as someone who is certified Fucking Weird About Her Friends. But also just in general I think it's worth noting to this fandom. There's this kind of running half-joke I see a lot about the Gangsey as a polycule that stems from how Weird About Each Other they are, but I think it is important to the story and the characters and to ME that some of the dynamics within this group are, in fact, entirely platonic. It's true that they're not "just friends," but that's not because they are romantic. It's just cause they're all weirdos and we as a society devalue platonic relationships.

I just love the way this mirrors the opening line of The Raven Boys ("Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she had been told that she would kill her true love"). It's this comparison between them as having destinies from a young age, but it also contrasts them - Blue has this deeply specific, magical destiny predicted, whereas Gansey is being told this in a deeply normal sort of way, and ultimately they do both fulfil those destinies, but they do so on their own terms rather than what others expect of them.

Although I don't necessarily think any of these things are being directly equated, I do think the phrasing implies at least some level of comparison: 'quit' versus 'leave,' Adam as something Ronan is active in, Gansey as a landscape he exists in.

It's just so like. It's so very Ronan to say this and it's such a great way of demonstrating so quickly how his sort of brashness or whatever you want to call it is actually just what Adam needs and wants.

An interesting moment of meta and foreshadowing here around Ronan's connection to Cabeswater and to Adam. Of course Cabeswater would save Adam, it's Ronan's, and all of Ronan's dreams love Adam as much as he does.