on queerness in the Raven Boys
Raven Boys AU where everything is the same except that Ronan is as in your face, fuck you about his sexuality as he is about every other thing in his life, making out with boys in cars and being gloriously uncloseted since forever, and the coming out narrative we actually get is Adam’s, a gentle arc of self-realisation as the boy who’s grown up with toxic gender roles, domestic abuse, a chronic allergy to pity and a deep-seated terror of being seen as different slowly figures out that he’s allowed to be bisexual; that being out isn’t just some shocking, terrifying thing that only someone like Ronan Lynch could hope to get away with.
I mean. Don’t get me wrong, I love these books and they’re gorgeously written, but it’s incomprehensible to me, a queer person, why Ronan, a character who’s gloriously anti-authoritarian, deliberately provocative, thoughtfully profane and openly sacrilegious in so many ways is also written as closeted Because Catholicism (I assume?) when Catholic guilt otherwise plays no obvious part in his characterisation; whereas Adam, who’s consistently trying to present himself as The Boy He Thinks He Should Be - whose entire character arc hinges on learning to accept help, to accept himself, to grow into his own version of adulthood - just suddenly rolls with liking dudes? With no apparent lead up or drama or angst or self-doubt? And who doesn’t even get the word bisexual applied to him in canon?
Like, to be clear: I’m not saying that Catholic Guilt is an insufficient motive for being closeted IRL, or that a reader with a Catholic upbringing wouldn’t automatically read a great deal more into that aspect of Ronan’s character than me, but in text, it never seemed to be part of his internal narration or decision-making process (unless I’m forgetting some stuff from the early previous books?) and it doesn’t come up when he finally comes out, either. Likewise, I’m not saying IRL that someone in Adam’s position couldn’t just accept the discovery that they swing both ways, no questions asked, but in text, it feels curiously out of character, given how deeply Adam otherwise thinks about belonging and class and outsider status and boys’ clubs and how to fit in and what people think of him (and so on) that the apparently late-breaking discovery of his queerness is somehow exempt from this. That he’s only concerned about hurting Ronan (though not, again, in any way that touches on religion or being closeted or whether Ronan wants to come out; in fact I’m pretty sure he outs him to Gansey without discussion?) and not about what it means for him, if anything.
Again: I really like the series, and have recommended it to multiple people. But the more I think about this aspect of things, the more it bugs me, and the more I want to discuss it.
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