and really IS the public ready to talk about genderfluid ronan. idk!
@eeveelutiontrainer yeah ok. i've been talking with @unloneliest about this and many of these points should be credited to them. ronan lynch's self concept is in some ways "catholic gayboy with magic powers". ronan lynch also has a physical embodiment of his inner child that manifests as a young girl with goat legs. to psychics, ronan is "like a woman pregnant with quadruplets, but worse". ronan is a teen mom. ronan is the empress card. ronan is a magic forest. to quote den unloneliest, "someone needs to tell him being a catholic gayboy doesn't mean he can't also be a girl at the same time." and they're right. ronan is a character with a foot in many worlds, whose life has different/competing frames of context, who is used to having different identities in different situations, shifting in the light. at the same time, he's always the truest version of himself that he can be in that moment: i simply agree with den that someone needs to tell him "you can be a transfem butch sometimes without changing a thing about yourself." i think in a timeline where adam comes out as trans, ronan is put in a position where he has the opportunity to examine his own gender identity, and the outcome of that that makes the most sense to me is a ronan who finds "boy" fits about as well as "human" fits, which is to say, usefully in some contexts, loosely in others, and in some contexts not at all. i think ronan could have a lot of fun playing with gender. just as ronan as a character is often old and young at the same time, human and inhuman at the same time, belonging and not belonging at the same time, impossible but present, knowable and unknowable, limited and limitless, creating and destroying, greywaren/ronan i think could be a boy or a girl or both or neither depending on the light.
i don't want to be, like, called out for pointing at a canon gay boy and saying "that isn't a gay boy actually, that's an Entity Of Varying Gender"-- my point is that ronan IS a gay boy. but also other things. it's a "yes, and" scenario. ronan is a gay boy teen mom scribble of dark lightning in the realm between our realm and the next. if you disagree that's fine: you could also read ronan/greywaren as having chosen to be a boy in this life and being really solid in that choice. but i think there's a compelling reading supporting ronan as more gender expansive. this headcanon for me DOES depend heavily on my headcanon version of the narrative where adam eventually comes out as transfem: i think without a catalyst like that, ronan wouldn't question this aspect of his identity. this sort of thing happens many times in ronan's narrative in the books: see the "i thought i knew. turns out i know fuck all" moment in Greywaren. I think a lot of ronan's journey in the books is about his becoming more expansive and learning to accept and incorporate and honor all his different seemingly conflicting facets. i think in a world where ronan is presented with this truth from adam, he would end up restructuring his view of his own gender. i think ronan's boyhood is tied very closely to his understanding of himself as gay and i think if he was presented with a narrative where the object of his affections actually isn't a man, he'd have another "turns out I know fuck all" moment. without any change in presentation ronan could be multiple other genders. and that's my genderfluid ronan thesis.