Irish Trc - Tumblr Posts

so i’ve been reading up on my irish mythology for a possible post-trk fic i have a chapter written of but am still v much developing and i was thinking conflict etc. and it struck me that while the fandom sees all those sleeping cows at the barns and thinks about ronan lynch’s soft farmer potential, when you think about magic + cows in irish myth, cows are literally the whole cause of the epic mythological war that dominates the ulster cycle - the táin bó cúailnge (which translates to the cattle raid of cooley). like fantastical/magical cows are the helen of troy of irish legends i stg and in my mind niall lynch, being the obnoxiously showy fucker that he was, who we know was knowledgable when it came to irish folklore as he passed it on to his sons, is the sort of guy i can see creating this dream herd of cows and deciding to dream himself his own super magical bulls, pulling donn cúailnge and finnbhennach out of his dreams and back into life aka the two bulls queen meadhbh & king ailill mac máta of connacht throw down over.  like i now think of these cows ronan has grazing, and how the gangsey view them in this idyllic way, and then the complete chaos their existence could actually instigate 

one thing that i cannot deal with at all, that i have been greedily hoarding away for a fic that is taking too long to write, and that i just cannot contain within myself a moment longer, has to do with Richard Campbell Gansey III’s name and a very particular reason why it’s hilarious, which i refuse to believe is anything other than intentional. Irish people, overall, do not speak much Irish, despite the fact we’re taught it in school for 14 years straight, because of the old 800 years of british colonial oppression. so the really common words that people cannot avoid learning are thus elevated to a certain echelon within the national consciousness - these words have an aura; these words are rife with comedic potential; these words are simplistic as fuck. the best demonstration of this i can think of is the carlsberg irish ad that literally everyone in the country knows backwards for this exact reason. if you watched that, you may have picked up on one of these words which is of particular interest: geansaí, which is pronounced gansey and means sweater. now just try to tell me that maggie stiefvater isn’t aware of this - she just has to be, there are no two ways about it. she heard the word geansaí, one of the most basic and bizarrely integral words of the contemporary irish language, and thought “hey! that sounds strangely posh! like the name of a rich waspy republican family!” and then proceeded to have a laugh at the expense of her readers, despite the fact that the word is irish and the majority of ireland is missing three quarters of the letters in the wasp acronym. “i will give this fancy boy a fancy sounding name" she thought “i shall call him a fancy-sounding irish word for a sweater” is this where his obnoxious taste in clothes comes in??? and like honestly - the first time i read it i could not deal with how funny this was and since then anyone i have mentioned the books to i inevitably end up mentioning his name to them and 110% of the time everyone is like “this fancy american boy’s name is what?” and then they laugh for 800 years because everyone knows about the word geansaí and not only that - it is a cultural in-joke of a word due to its sheer basicness like honestly why is ronan lynch not ripping him to shreds over this - why was niall lynch not ripping him to shreds over this - this is obviously hilarious and amazing

this just in: gansey has always shared a surprising affinity with earl sweatshirt no one can quite figure out and this is why 

one thing that i cannot deal with at all, that i have been greedily hoarding away for a fic that is taking too long to write, and that i just cannot contain within myself a moment longer, has to do with Richard Campbell Gansey III’s name and a very particular reason why it’s hilarious, which i refuse to believe is anything other than intentional. Irish people, overall, do not speak much Irish, despite the fact we’re taught it in school for 14 years straight, because of the old 800 years of british colonial oppression. so the really common words that people cannot avoid learning are thus elevated to a certain echelon within the national consciousness - these words have an aura; these words are rife with comedic potential; these words are simplistic as fuck. the best demonstration of this i can think of is the carlsberg irish ad that literally everyone in the country knows backwards for this exact reason. if you watched that, you may have picked up on one of these words which is of particular interest: geansaí, which is pronounced gansey and means sweater. now just try to tell me that maggie stiefvater isn’t aware of this - she just has to be, there are no two ways about it. she heard the word geansaí, one of the most basic and bizarrely integral words of the contemporary irish language, and thought “hey! that sounds strangely posh! like the name of a rich waspy republican family!” and then proceeded to have a laugh at the expense of her readers, despite the fact that the word is irish and the majority of ireland is missing three quarters of the letters in the wasp acronym. “i will give this fancy boy a fancy sounding name" she thought “i shall call him a fancy-sounding irish word for a sweater” is this where his obnoxious taste in clothes comes in??? and like honestly - the first time i read it i could not deal with how funny this was and since then anyone i have mentioned the books to i inevitably end up mentioning his name to them and 110% of the time everyone is like “this fancy american boy’s name is what?” and then they laugh for 800 years because everyone knows about the word geansaí and not only that - it is a cultural in-joke of a word due to its sheer basicness like honestly why is ronan lynch not ripping him to shreds over this - why was niall lynch not ripping him to shreds over this - this is obviously hilarious and amazing

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. 

big m00d - maybe it has something to do with the prevalence of "irish" culture globally? i mean the majority of that is some kind of contemporary Stage Irish-ness™ & harking back to an imagined ireland that doesn't really exist, largely for the benefit of the admittedly massive irish diaspora & their descendents to try to connect their roots to (9-10 million people born in ireland have emigrated since the 1700s and we have a minister of state appointed to our diaspora) (i could also talk about how appropriating faux irish culture is used as an excuse for a drunken good time and further adds to the general simulacrum and muddying of how people view ireland/irish people, but that sounds tiring to me so i’m not gonna). I mean even as far back as like 1910, Desmond FitzGerald recalled visiting the Blaskets to learn Irish and observed the linguistic landscape in writing: “There in that Irish-speaking district one could, as it were, watch the progressive death of the language. Not only was there a difference between the language of these old men from pre-Famine days to that of the middle-aged men, but also between that of the middle-aged men and the younger generation. The old men spoke Irish all of the time, even when they went into Dingle; the middle-aged spoke Irish at home in the village, but Englsih when they went to town. And often even in Ballyferriter one would hear the younger men [only] speaking English together.” In 1910. Like the area he visited is still one of the most active Irish-speaking regions in the country but the effects of british colonisation weren’t entirely ceased with irish independence and the celtic revival movements that were entwined with it. The Blaskets haven’t even had any permanent residents since 1953, there’s no one even there to speak that variation of the language anymore.  The thing about living in a postcolonial country is that you’re still living in the detonation site of a cultural bomb, the effect of which “is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their untiy, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves... It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves; for instance, with other people’s languages rather than their own.” [Ngûgî wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind (Oxford: James Currey, 1986), 3]   We were colonised by the English for 800 years and live in a post-colonial world in which English is the third most spoken language. “The limits of my language are the limits of my world” (Ludwig Wittgenstein) - and as Irish has been strangled and smothered progressively over centuries, as barely anyone in the country learns it as a first language, as it’s dying and misrepresented and misunderstood, there’s understandably a sense that there are more practical languages to learn to expand the limits of the world. Even Daniel O’Connell, The Liberator himself, viewed “the old language [as] a barrier to modern progress.” I mean, in an ideal world, reviving our language, which has shaped the hiberno-english we speak and is a part of our heritage, would be more of a priority for us as deconstruction of the limits imposed within our identities by colonialism. But like I’m saying this as an Irish person who has barely any Irish, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

(woops i wrote a lot)

tl;dr Irish is Irish, not Gaelic, and also very few of us can even speak it, so having Irish characters start philosophising romantically as Gaelige to impress the people around them usually comes across as completely and utterly ridiculous and drenched in cringe 

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 

You’re extremely welcome - happy to help anyone with their Irish/Celtic Mythology needs to the best of my abilities/knowledge!

Teaching myself celtic mythology (pt. 3)

An amazing person has just helped me.

Thank you so much @ravenslynch

You are awesome.

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? 

I actually 100% agree with both of these posts and suggest a Ronan Lynch who wears black utility kilts and fights anyone who ignorantly remarks on them as being Irish but obviously lives for the goth aesthetic

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!

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

Give 👏 Ronan 👏 Lynch 👏 an 👏 Irish 👏 Wolfhound 👏

this is a repost because the quantity/contents of my tags dropped it out of search (why does this always happen to me? does it happen to anyone else?? why is tumblr like this???) but Listen:

Ronan and Adam wake up one day with a heaping mass of grey fur between them and blearily panic that Ronan has brought a bear back from his dreams

They soon realise that it is in fact a colossal dog with a ridiculously regal/wise countenance who befriends Chainsaw in .2 seconds and materialises beside Ronan whenever he’s feeling particularly angsty or whenever shit is going down

It’s a very big dog

It’s a very very tall dog

Imagine Ronan in the middle of a showdown with a gigantic mythical (magical?) war hound at his side

But also Ronan remembering Niall acting out the legend of Cú Chulainn and the wolfhound

And thinking about Cú Chulainn’s self imposed penance for slaying the hound in self-defence and taking its name as his own

And thinking about Cú Chulainn’s supernatural affinity with animals

And thinking about Niall and the spear and not wanting to be the spear

And looking at this dream dog and wanting to be more than all of that, with the wolfhound at his side and with minimal blood shed

(And maybe naming her Scáthach, meaning ‘She Who Walks in Shadow’, after the fearsome battle trainer and seer who trained Cú Chulainn in war-craft because that’s exactly the kind of edgy and badass that would appeal to him and also because he’d delight in mocking the gangsey for their horrific attempts at pronouncing it)

(She could be Scá for short - Skaw isn’t as tricky for them to get the hang of and there’s something about Chainsaw and Scá as a pairing that works) 

(And on occasion Cú Scioból/Cú Cabeswater/etc.)

help I cannot get this casting of Niall Lynch out of my head - I know the general trend is to find some model looking guy with artisanal stubble and a smirky face but my brain has landed in a slightly different direction. I present film director & critic Mark Cousins:

Working-class Catholic Belfast background, raised during The Troubles, voice still has that lilt 

Dark curly hair/stubble/tattoos/general rad dad chic

Also a sensible age to fit

He’s got an all encompassing lust for life and when he talks about his work and how he’s travelled all over the world - he basically sounds like he’s dreamed it all into reality for himself somehow idk man he’s lived his life as a grand and radical adventure and gives off a trc-Lynchian aura

Like just think of him talking about cinema as him talking about dreams - in the line of that Jean Leirens quote “[Cinema creates] a vacuum, which dreams readily fill” - just look at him go 1 + 2 + 3

Sorry but I don’t know how to unsee this and I needed to share. 

Tbh he seems like the absolute opposite of Niall’s problematic streak and 1100% does not seem like he would ever dream himself a romantic partner reliant on his personhood to exist - so apologies @ Mark Cousins but I have aligned you with the hot mess that is Niall Lynch in my mind and now it will never truly leave me, even though I think he’s a massive asshole & find Cousins to be a very Good person. 

(ps here’s a short article he wrote for the guardian about Belfast/representations of Northern Ireland/The Troubles in cinema if you’re in any way interested)

This just in: Ronan Lynch cracks out a ramshackle bodhrán occasionally when blaring techno or house full volume. He can be found lying with his legs dangling over the back of the couch and his head hanging towards the ground, beating the drum incessantly along to the music, regardless of the fact that he’s utterly useless at it. 

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 =)