Matthew Lynch - Tumblr Posts

anyone else ever reading a book series or watching a tv show and so you look it up on tiktok or tumblr or something because you want to look at posts about it but then end up getting EVERYTHING about it spoiled?

because i do and i don’t know what the last time i was actually unaware of a plot twist or something significant in a book was before reading it because i end up getting things unintentionally spoiled for myself.

my mom and sister are always like “just stop looking up stuff about it” and i get that but i sometimes take months to read book series and i want to look at posts, fan art , and read fan fiction even when i’m not done with the series.

and then when something has a spoiler warning and you all-ready have had stuff spoiled for you but don’t know if it’s going to be something you don’t know or do know.

anyway random other thought but where do y’all read raven cycle fan fiction other than on AO3? cause i cant really find any good ones on there (or do you have any recs)

ok but i love the fact that ronan chews on his bracelets espically when he’s stressed or fidgety because it’s very relatable and seems like something i would do if i wore bracelets but also i can’t help but think about how many germs are on them and how i probably couldn’t bring myself to put something that dirty in my mouth

god can you imagine being niall's lawyer

niall: i want to leave a few million dollars to each of my sons and the rest to maintaining my house and wife

lawyer: weird way to say that but all right

niall: she's going to go into a coma when i die, you know

lawyer:

niall: also i want my middle son to have the house, but if he ever goes inside it, bankrupt the little shit

lawyer:

niall, brandishing a scrap of paper: also here's this sentence in a nonsense language. work that in somewhere

PSA for the raven cycle fandom or any other fandom with irish characters or characters of irish descent - irish people call the irish language irish or, in irish, gaeilge. the word gaelic is usually used to refer to gaelic football. no one says that they speak gaelic here. 

there are gaelic languages - scots gaelic, for example, being the name of the gaelic language spoken in scotland - but, if you’re talking about irish people speaking the gaelic language of ireland, it’s called irish/gaeilge. thanks so much for tuning in. 

@ganseylike #but on the other hand #no-one in scotland is going to specify that the gaelic they speak is 'SCOTTISH gaelic' yeah this is probably v true - I haven’t had the chance to get into this with a Scottish person yet, I just threw it in absentmindedly as Scottish people may be more likely to call it gaelic, particularly as they also have scots which is a seperate language? - scottish people feel free to come here and yell at me as this is just off the cuff thinking here - basically it’s more that scots gaelic is how we refer to scottish gaelic in ireland, but we don’t tend to use gaelic when we’re referring to our own language and it’s not a component of its title

mainly I just want to avoid the narrative dissonance which comes from reading something about an irish character and then being told that they are speaking gaelic, it’s just so jarring.

PSA for the raven cycle fandom or any other fandom with irish characters or characters of irish descent - irish people call the irish language irish or, in irish, gaeilge. the word gaelic is usually used to refer to gaelic football. no one says that they speak gaelic here. 

there are gaelic languages - scots gaelic, for example, being the name of the gaelic language spoken in scotland - but, if you’re talking about irish people speaking the gaelic language of ireland, it’s called irish/gaeilge. thanks so much for tuning in. 

lol this literally just appeared on my dash (via @arielmagicesi) - if it wasn’t already obvious because of the universal love of scottish twitter, the use of gaelic makes it super clear that this is from the land of alba rather than éire  

PSA for the raven cycle fandom or any other fandom with irish characters or characters of irish descent - irish people call the irish language irish or, in irish, gaeilge. the word gaelic is usually used to refer to gaelic football. no one says that they speak gaelic here. 

there are gaelic languages - scots gaelic, for example, being the name of the gaelic language spoken in scotland - but, if you’re talking about irish people speaking the gaelic language of ireland, it’s called irish/gaeilge. thanks so much for tuning in. 

so i haven’t posted any ronan lynch jams in a while, and while this isn’t being added to my magnum opus ronan headcanon & playlist of alt abrasive techno & electronic music, this is 110% a bygone lynch family favourite that niall used to pump full volume to his sons at every opportunity

irish punk-grunge about the troubles, how could he not? 

even declan wasn’t able to resist howling along to “it’s the same old theme/since 1916/in your head, in your head, they’re still fighting” 

(also niall’s parenting relied heavily on proclaiming “this is not what the men of 1916 died for” whenever any of his sons did something dumb because he always thought this was hilarious sorry i don’t make the rules)  but maybe “another mother’s breaking/heart is taking over/when the violence causes silence/we must be mistaken” cuts a little too close to the bone these days 

one of the most unrealistic things in trc imo is that there’s no hint of irish Lynch relatives descending on Henrietta en masse for Niall or Aurora’s funerals. like we as a people are obbsessed with funerals - everyone’s parents keep a constant eye on rip.ie, a site that’s a frequent cultural reference in irish memes, and we tend to go to wakes and funerals even if we don’t know the person all that well or haven’t seen them in years or they’re related or close to someone we know, even if we don’t know them personally. You don’t have to be invited personally to attend, we put out a notice and whoever wants to can come basically, and indeed if you don’t show face it can be considered rude or uncaring, unless the notice says house private, in which case it’s a more private ceremony. But even then any extended family typically goes along. Like did Declan discourage them from coming in a misguided attempt to give Ronan time to process after Niall’s death? That’s literally the only thing that makes sense to me and I can see that causing a lot of familial tension tbh. And also that may work once but I don’t see them not coming over when they lose a second parent so soon afterwards.

Also a quick note to say that generally Irish people think of Irish pipes as Uilleann pipes or I guess elbow pipes? We don’t call them bagpipes as they’re generally thought of as the Scottish pipes, and Scotland is associated with their pipes to a greater degree imo so yeah bagpipes make us think Scotland. I know in trc when they visit Thr Barns we’re told about a set of bagpipes in the corner, but either this is because of the fact that this chapter isn’t written from Ronan’s perspective, and so we’re getting a skewed cultural understanding of what the Uilleann/elbow pipes are, or Maggie doesn’t realise this. But yeah it just looks weird when people talk about bagpipes as an Irish instrument, even though it may be technically true, we just don’t refer to them as that most of the time.

hello! It’s Saint Patrick’s Day! If you draw/write Ronan Lynch in a kilt I will personally come to your home and sit you down and explain that kilts are primarily a Scottish garment and that they are not a thing in Ireland!! this has been a raven cycle Irish heritage PSA!

@litelatin replied to your post “Anonymous asked: I'm French and Irish living in the US and my Irish grandfather...”  what kind of headcannons?

As in what irish hcs bother me in this respect as an irish person? EDIT: this got kind of long, but if you’re interested in learning about what “Irish” elements in hcs/writing/etc. can come across badly to an Irish reader or interrupt suspension of disbelief, see below the cut for some points I came up with off the top of my head - this is written thinking about Ronan Lynch/TRC but also includes some of my general musings. I’m happy to consult with anyone who wants help with this!

I mean some general ones that I’ve already posted about are people referring to Irish as Gaelic (check the replies for further discourse) and having Irish people all be fluent and profound with the Irish language without any explanation how or the importance of this to their identity, which shows a complete ignorance of the whole post-colonial situation the language is in, or people using the term bagpipes to refer to Irish instruments which doesn’t sound right to us at all. You do have this in trc itself but I believe this is because the pov of that chapter isn’t lynch and it’s in-character ignorance of this. a helpful anon has let me know that maggie does seem aware of the terminology on her blog so at least there’s that. But also stuff like @arbores--loqui--latine’s post on st patrick’s day about how kilts are also Scottish and not Irish generally. This post gave me life tbh. Generally, I find the idea of Ronan acting anything other than livid about American interpretations of st patrick’s day don’t really work for me? Firstly, because of who he is as a person. Secondly, he’s second generation and the son of someone who was born in the North and I don’t think he would have been raised to think that pinching someone for not wearing green is a thing (it’s not in Ireland anyway) or as someone tied to a magical dream forrest he’d support dying rivers green or that Niall wouldn’t have been one to take part in our national past time of judging people for referring to it as st patty’s (it’s st patrick’s day or paddy’s day or nothing at all). Like I’m fine with Ronan ironically opting for a “kiss me I’m irish” line he fully knows is terrible, but idk, I think an interesting complexity can be found in his character as being so close to his irish heritage as an irish american? like i find that balance more compelling personally Other things are like pretty much anytime anyone writes irish!ronan - as in a ronan who is meant to be 100% born and raised in ireland - they do this terrible unnatural hokey dialect or speech pattern for him and his character becomes some mystical caricature and i cannot go any further without combusting with embarrassment. 

(generally there’s an obvious lack of awareness of irish history touched upon with this almost every time, with weird things coming out of comments people make offhand that just completely ruin all suspension of disbelief for me)

really odd stuff can come out of this too like weird wedding traditions that are in no way common or accounts of life in ireland as though the emerald isle is some magical/ahistorical realm out of Man of Aron that are again drenched in a long history of stage irishness and paddywhackery most foul.

i do often enjoy hcs and fics that draw on irish fairy lore, but if literally any single person ignorantly includes a leprechaun i will break out in hives - the contemporary version of a leprechaun which everyone is familiar with is a derogatory xenophobic stereotype based entirely on 19th century british colonial cartoons making fun of the primitive irish. they aren’t funny. stop. if you’re gonna use them, please confront their history when you do. if you mention them generally, be aware of their historical context. it’s bad and cringey enough they’re used in ireland as a fun gimmick for tourists. we don’t even have lucky charms in ireland and they make our blood boil fyi. there’s obvz a lot of stuff out there about alcohol and ireland which is Not Great and ill-informed and perpetuated without question? which unfortunately trc is kind of set up to allow for. i mean i do find harry potter much worse for this, but seamus finnegan is at least a side character, so there’s less major fandom posting perpetuating these problems without question. (also see the context of the st patrick’s day discourse above - like it’s a bit ew that our national holiday is celebrated by perpetuating a massive irish stereotype/social issue? idk)

also there’s some stuff out there about ireland and religion which is sort of quite dated or over-simplified? i don’t have the energy to go into this right now but that’s just a general topic that can raise my eyebrow

wow this is really long lol sorry - there’s just a lot that i generally ignore because it just makes no sense and this is some of it. tbh a lot of it is this intangible mysticism of “irish” characters as mentioned above, like i can’t give firm examples, it’s just inherent stuff in how characters are positioned/viewed/etc. I know that it generally is coming from a “good” place but a lot of it is rooted in really bad history and people just don’t know about it so that’s a shame. 

Like this is all 100% off the top of my head also. Again: If anyone wants me to read over their use of irish culture or characters, I would be happy to give feedback! I don’t want to discourage people from honestly engaging with these things, I just want to encourage more people to do a quick google before including something or actually checking with an irish person first, because a lot of this stuff actually reads like people have tried to look up irish traditions and completely missed the reality of what they’ve found or were led astray by the quantity of nonsense out there.  Does that answer your question? Any other Irish fans with anything to add? 

Important question: do you HC Ronan’s family from Northern Ireland or the Republic bc in my experience those are wildly different cultures and it changes everything for me if Ronan’s family is actually from Belfast and not like Claire or something

omg im so sorry this got lost! Glad to have found it though, this is a really interesting question. I mean, both probably? As in, I probably think about him as having family in Belfast but also having cousins etc. in the Republic too. You’re right that Niall growing up in Belfast is definitely a very particular cultural experience which could be read to have significant political and historical implications about his character and his family. For that reason, I do generally maintain that Niall is from Belfast and his parents raised him there. But I also like the opportunity for the family to have connections to the Republic as well.

Due to how small Ireland is, I have 3 great grandparents and a grandfather from Belfast, but I also have roots in Kerry/Galway/Leitrim/etc., although at least ¾ grandparents, if not all, probably ended up spending the majority of their lives in Dublin, as have both of my parents and myself. So it isn’t wild to have a mix of different places in his background. I mean they’re different places, and what perspective you’re given from being Irish Catholic in Belfast vs. Clare is totally different for sure. If you visit Belfast and then visit Clare, you’re also going to find that they’re undoubtedly very different places. But also being from Belfast doesn’t mean you don’t have ties to people or history in Clare, even if your cultural experience of your Irishness is in a completely different context and is thus subject to a very particular political/government landscape. Does that make sense? 

Just looking at the Lynch name, you can find dual origins for it. In old Irish families, in numerous counties throughout the island, it was used as an anglicisation of the Irish name O'Loinsigh. But also the Norman de Lench family, who came over in the 12th century with Strongbow, then gave their name the Hiberno treatment (lol where’s the truth what came first which way is up) and it changed to Lynch, and they were counted as one of the Tribes of Galway by the 15th century. Like to be up front, this is v basic research into the Lynch family name on my part, but just goes to show that there are families in every single county that carry the name, and there are different historical directions you can go with that to incorporate different elements of folklore/mythology/history/etc. into the Lynch family makeup which is a v good time imo.

However, I do think that Niall’s Belfast background is meant to be significant. In what way, I don’t know. It could just be Maggie thinking “Oh I’ll make him have an Irish Catholic origin story in Belfast, probably coinciding with the troubles, to further emphasis his rebellious nature while also allowing me access to that sweet Irish mythology/all those Yeats quotes(?) and Abbey Theatre references(??) that I love” which is quite the tactic and a whole other discussion. But regardless of why she chose Belfast, she did settle on Niall being from Belfast, and you’re right that that is a culturally significant place to grow up, particularly for someone of the age bracket we can only assume via guess work Niall was in. So I think it can be important to maintain that connection and I like that it can be used as a way of demonstrating that history and exploring its potential impact.

Like there are numerous hcs/fics I’ve come across that maintain his/Ronan’s Belfast connection, but don’t seem to get the significance of it at all, which is super jarring. Like you can’t just make them live in the North and treat them as living in some colour-by-numbers/horribly stereotyped version of Ireland™️ - that’s bad enough generally but like the complete lack of understanding of the difference between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland just takes it up a whole other notch. Like there are fics that have a historical setting with Ronan living in Northern Ireland and they Don’t Make A Lick Of Historical Sense without an awareness of the issues. They just don’t. It’s like a whole other level to the au that the au isn’t aware of. 

But that being said, I’m currently in the rough stages of a fic that gives Ronan other branches of the family in other parts of the country too. I mean the cross border family is also an interesting thing from my perspective (although I’m not sure how far I’m going to delve into this yet), and, as mentioned before, I want to use elements of mythology tied to different parts of the country, so I think that can add to the narrative too, while maintaining Niall’s identity.I’m probably brushing over things and over simplifying things but you’re right that there’s a difference in a character being read as being from the North or as being from the Republic. I just want people to keep this in mind generally, as long as people do a bit of research into these things/ask an Irish trc fan such as myself or @arbores–loqui–latine for genuine Irish info from a genuine Irish source, the Lynch family background/cultural positioning can be a super interesting thing, probably regardless of where you trace them as being from, though again they’re two very different things. Apologies for totally spitballing with complex issues surrounding Irish identity and history, this probably isn’t my best work tbh, though very much worthwhile to consider. 

Hello, I'd just like to say I am so glad I stumbled upon your blog and thank you for blessing me with Real Irish facts and hcs on the Lynches. I'm an irish-American with irish grandparents and like some of the stuff you say is just So True. Your post about Irish people and funerals had me shaking my head. Bc I just went to a funeral of my grandma's sister, and barely anyone knew anyone there. I heard my dad say "I think that may be my cousin. He looks like it could be, and I'm gonna find out."

Ahhhhh thank you! So glad you’re enjoying them! That is such a Big Mood for funerals omg - my mum and her brothers are super in contact with all their many first cousins and I even know some of my fourth cousins on that side but it’s so many people? actually there are a few of their first cousins who are MIA due to feuds with their siblings (lol the drama) so there are some mysteries, but that’s still a lot of people. and then you also have all the random people a person has ever breathed the same air as turning up? so it’s like “are we related? I don’t think we’re related. But maybe….” And then my dad is less close with his family but similarly has a lot of cousins who are all for the funerals and all for the month’s minds and all arrive out of the mist to these events whenever they occur. All the men seem to be called Ed/Edwyn/Edward/Eddie/etc. like it’s the literal inspiration for Ed, Edd n Eddy, so by that process of elimination it’s usually easy to work out what full grown men I’m related to but god knows when it comes to everyone else. God, Irish funerals can be surprisingly gas, let me use this as an opportunity to continue my campaign to get some representation in the raven cycle/the dreamer trilogy even as some belated event for niall and aurora - I need Declan, Matthew and Ronan Lynch bewildered on our level by their extended family/their parents Irish acquaintances rn

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish, Declan Lynch & Ronan Lynch Characters: Ronan Lynch, Adam Parrish, Declan Lynch, Orphan Girl | Opal, Matthew Lynch, Blue Sargent Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Established Relationship, Long-Distance Relationship, College, Communication, Lynch Sibling Rivalry, Ronan being domestic as fuck Summary:

Ronan thinks it’s weird that Adam is spending time with his brother. Adam thinks it’s weird that Ronan thinks it’s weird. (Nobody gives a shit what you think, Declan.)

I know you've said before that Niall was probably from Belfast but I'm pretty sure I recall it being stated somewhere in the books something about him being from Roscommon? I mean to be fair I could have dreamt it but I'll try and find where I saw it

I don’t know about whether there may be mention of Roscommon at some point but in the prologue to The Dream Thieves it tells us “Niall Lynch was a braggart poet, a loser musician, a charming bit of hard luck bred in Belfast but born in Cumbria, and Ronan loved him like he loved nothing else.” I generally tend to ignore the Cumbria bit though. People generally do? Idk England doesn’t particularly compel me in relation to the Lynch as “Irish” characters soz - though I’m guessing these links may be developed in regards to the Scottish history/Celtic revival linked with Cumbria? But actually has anyone ever considered a Niall of NI descent raised in Cumbria as opposed to Norn Iron? Like that’s a whole thing u feel can we just - he’s written in a way that cloaks the potential of this entwined identity I feel - I need more of the relevance to make me give this any weight what’s the deal what is up why - also please keep in mind all of tumblr that I am the most perpetually exhausted I have ever been and as someone who never started their work in advance in college and has had issues with sleep generally for over 10 years that’s saying something so be forgiving for any glaring errors of logic I’m trying my goddamn best rn I stg I will be a real human so soon so beautifully soon I can sleep

how often do you get asks about ireland-related trc stuff? i have a question but i think it might be super dumb lmao

tbh i would happily answer any questions people have whenever! what’s your question? it’s actually really nice to get them sent my way and there’s nothing dumb about trying to find ireland-related things out with an irish person, i’d be delighted to help =)

imo any Christmas trc content that doesn’t include Ronan/Declan/Matthew referring to the 26th of December as St Stephen’s or just Stephen’s Day and using it as the truly sacred day of slugging our with left overs together is really missing out on some tranquil Irish Lynch vibes - like not to say sales aren’t some people’s major Stephen’s day plan, but lbr that’s just not Them, and also there is the whole going-out-with-your-mates-that-night route but I really think they’d be leaning more heavily on the nesting approach in the barns and a day of enforced truce between them

If I told you, you’d think I was crazy

I’m the sun and the moon and the stars

I’m the earth, I’m the water you walk on

I’m the sun and the moon and the stars

Mister Impossible

notable crimes that the Lynch brothers commit in the dreamer trilogy

Declan: mass murder🩸

Ronan: ecoterrorism 🌳

Matthew: driving without a license 🚘

Declan not telling Ronan that he dreamed Matthew is pretty fucked up but honestly it must have felt pretty shitty to know you weren’t enough for your brother so he subconsciously made himself a new one.