@litelatin Replied To Your PostAnonymous Asked:I'm French And Irish Living In The US And My Irish Grandfather...

@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? 

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. 

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. 

raven cycle au where everything’s the same except all the tarot cards are from the lisa frank deck

Big mood

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!