colburns:

blue/gansey is wonderful to me because they are, before anything else, best friends. that is my favorite thing about them as a ship–that blue literally at one point says “i just want to be gansey’s best friend forever until i die and then maybe bang him like, a lot, someday”. that is what i wish more het relationships in fiction depicted–friendship and genuine care for the other person first, sexy romantic stuff second. 

i’m obvs not the biggest fan of what TRK did to either of these characters, but their series-long arc as a relationship means a lot to me.

they start out not as enemies, but as vaguely antagonistic. blue has very understandable prejudices against aglionby boys, and gansey on the surface is very much every aglionby thing that blue hates. he’s not polite and down-to-earth like adam, he’s not intimidating to the point where his opinion has more value like ronan, he’s not disarmingly sweet and quiet like noah. he’s President Cell Phone. he’s power and privilege and the guy who offered to pay her to talk to his best friend.

and they move from that to being friends even by the end of the first book. blue sees sides of gansey that no one else really understands. she sees the pain in his face when he looks at a magic that he can’t ever be a real part of; she understands the agony of wanting to be something more than the world has allowed either of them to be. this is a pretty big part of blue’s arc in TRB–her learning to move past her judgements of other people. this isn’t tied to gansey specifically of course–she has moments of understanding with ronan and adam as well–but gansey is the biggest example.

blue goes from thinking he’s a total asshole to trusting him with the fact that she is cursed. and gansey does the same–he trusts her with the full story of what happened to him. she’s not someone that he deems skeptical or transient–she feels right in the group, and within a few weeks of knowing her, he trusts her with all of the magic and death and trauma, despite spending most of his life being rebuffed or told that he didn’t actually experience that. 

then you get to TDT, where they’re joking around with each other, and gansey gets really excited when blue shows up (pls see my favorite gangsey scene aka the puzzle box scene when gansey joyfully cries “jane!” upon her entrance to the scene). they’re both crushing on each other–or coming to terms with crushing on each other–but they’re very much friends at this point. gansey calls blue when he’s a nervous wreck and she quiets him; blue calls gansey when she’s feeling terrible. they put their feelings for each other on the backburner, constantly, even after blue admits that she has a crush on him, because they’re prioritizing adam. again, blue is the person that gansey opens up to the most about the things that are bothering him. gansey keeps blue’s secret about her curse even when it means having to balance that and his commitment to adam (and does, bless him, try his agonized best to help adam work through their relationship drama).

in BLLB, my favorite Bluesey scenes aren’t even the romancey ones–it’s the scene where blue goes missing and gansey is frantic with worry about her; where he thinks that she’s been taken or hurt and makes himself sick over it. where his head knew that she was okay but his heart didn’t. and then the scene after persephone died, where there’s no romantic agenda, just gansey holding blue while she cries and holding her up through that trauma. there’s blue and gansey calling each other on the phone and making stupid jokes about congress just to make each other laugh or make each other feel better about the loneliness and wanderlust that sets in with both of them late at night.

and then TRK! for all its flaws (and there are many), TRK still shows them as best friends. the idea of gansey dying isn’t just devastating to blue because her True Love will be dead; it’s devastating because gansey is her person, her best friend, the person that she trusts with the best and worst parts of herself, and he’s going to be gone. gansey, when he has his breakdown, isn’t even bothered by blue seeing him that way, because he trusts her so much. they protect each other. they look to each other when big decisions need to be made. they spend half the book running around with their new bestie henry cheng, thwarting grocery store kidnappings and wearing togas. gansey bundles her up in his coat and covers her eye so she won’t hurt it more! 

it’s just all these small little things, all of these moments where gansey says that blue is fearless and brave and incredible, all of these moments where blue realizes that gansey is scared and traumatized and lonely, these moments where they are each other’s confidant and support system and protector. they’re best friends, and then they’re also in love, but caring about each other as people, loving each other as people, is always, always more important to both of them than romance or sex. 

it’s something that i wish i saw more of in fiction, because YA is so chock full of romance stories where i have to wonder if the couples actually even like each other as people.