remember when

"Rhys bared his teeth. My limbs turned light, trembling at the dark power curling in the corners of the room. Not fear - never fear of him. But at the shattered control as Rhys snarled at Lucien, 'My mate may one day find it in her to forgive him. Forgive you. But I will never forget how it felt to sense her terror in those moments.' My cheeks heated, especially as Cassian and Azriel stalked closer, those hazel eyes now filled with a mix of sympathy and wrath. 

Lucien, to his credit, didn't back away a step. From Rhys, from me, or the Illyrians. 

The Clever Fox Stares Down Winged Death. The painting flashed into my mind."

(it's the "forgive you" for me lmfao like shut the actual fuck up)

he has the audacity to say this shit to lucien when two books prior -

"'You draw blood from me, Lucien, and you’ll learn how quickly Amarantha’s whore can make the entire Autumn Court bleed. Especially its darling Lady.'

'Oh? Here I was, thinking you still mourned your commoner lover after all these centuries,' Rhysand said, stalking toward me."

"'I knew you liked to stoop low with your lovers, Lucien, but I never thought you’d actually dabble with mortal trash.” My face burned. Lucien was trembling—with rage or fear or sorrow, I couldn’t tell. 'The Lady of the Autumn Court will be grieved indeed when she hears of her youngest son. If I were you, I’d keep your new pet well away from your father.'"

"'Amarantha will enjoy breaking her,' Rhysand observed to Tamlin. 'Almost as much as she'll enjoy watching you as she shatters her bit by bit.'" 

Those invisible claws lazily caressed my mind again - then vanished. I sank to the floor, curling over my knees as I reeled in everything that I was, as I tried to keep from sobbing, from screaming, from emptying my stomach onto the floor. "

(damn. i wonder how it felt to feel her terror in those moments 🤔)

anyway, friendly reminder that rhysand is the biggest fucking hypocrite in the series and feyre & co's self-righteous attitudes are absolutely insufferable 🤗

these were a little too real for tiktok. maybe someday…

dare I dip my toes into acotar fandom discourse….

Sarah J. Maas has no idea what’s going on in her series.

There, I said it. That’s my biggest pet peeve with this series. After the first book, it seems like she’s just desperately trying to create more books to sell, but has nothing left to say. Even the King of Hybern is such a one dimensional villain. What is his backstory? What are his ulterior motives? Why does he hate humans? What’s his NAME? What about the entire COURT OF HYBERN? What are people doing over there? Why are they all described as pale soulless black-eyed creatures? No animals? No nothing? How do the fae live there? How did they manage to raise such a HUGE army if they are below the poverty line? He clearly does not need any slaves if his forces are so strong that they nearly annihilated Prythian?

Unfortunately, this universe is so poorly built. I really loved the first book and it pains me to say this because the world of Prythian is such an interesting concept but it is so UNFINISHED and UNEXPANDED that I wish the series would end after ACOTAR. I felt like there was no story to read afterwards, I was simply watching Feyre’s reality show. And frankly, other than Nesta, Tamlin, Jurien and Eris, who are all SIDE characters, no one seems to experience personal growth or change? None of our protagonists become better people? They just, bond with one another in a weird friendship cult that’s lowkey starting to feel very incestuous.

How can the inner circle look at Eris and not see that he's a dreamer just like them. He so obviously wants to make a better autumn court and a better life for his mother and Lucien. He saw Nesta's power and offered her a life where she wouldn't be a pawn in a game. "But he said mean stuff." They all have, bro. It's obvious he couldn't touch Mor or she would be trapped with him. He let her have the future she dreamed of.

Dreamer Eris. His father is killed and the first thing he does is take the first real breath of his life.

yall remember reading that Cassian and Rhys ganged up on Azriel and beat him to a pulp when they were little but somehow they're the pinnacle of Brotherhood™️ whereas Nesta and Elain are neglectful, mean (Nesta) and abusive towards Feyre

if mor was a girls girl she'd have yanked Cassian back and scolded him for bothering Nesta so much. idc if they're worst enemies or whatever but if I see a girl getting harassed by some guy after she verbally said to leave her alone, ESPECIALLY if it was my guy friend, I'd be putting his ass in his place for bothering her like ew why are u letting this man harass a girl when u were the subject of male harassment. girl ur an embarrassment to feminism and solidarity

Ember telling Nesta that she will find her way just breaks my fucking heart because the first half of the book is all Nesta in her element, doing as she pleases with her bestie Azriel, still doing what’s in the best interest of her family and just truly being her absolute best self and then the SECOND she’s back in the IC dynamic Ember is just watching her get berated for making a decision that we all know Feyre would also make. Like clearly Nesta expressed to Ember her turmoil over all of this and it makes me want to hug her and also slap Cassian.

It’s so tragic to see the dichotomy in one book of Nesta at her absolute best killing a fucking Asteri and then she goes HOME and … that …

I just … I have to dream that there’s something else for Nesta. A real home. Real acceptance.

Nesta has cemented herself as one of the most powerful characters in all of sjm’s worlds (killed the most powerful bad guys, ability to create Made items, wield the trove) and THANK GOODNESS she doesn’t have the insufferable arrogance of sjm’s other characters. She’s just like yeah I want to go home and have dessert and read my book.

Never change Sarah Janet, never change. But seriously, it takes Julie Plec levels of misogynoir to be as committed to disrespecting Black women in real life as you are to disrespecting them in fiction.

List of people who canonically like Nesta:

* Azriel

* Gwyn

* Emerie

* Amren

* Clotho

* The House

* Helion

* Eris

* Bryce

* Ember

* Randall

* Feyre (variable)

* Elain (variable)

List of people who Canonically dislike Nesta:

* Rhys

* Mor

* Cassian (?)

* Beron

* Devlon

* Graysen

Have y’all notice that in canon, everyone who meets Nesta that isn’t tied to the IC likes her? Just me?

There are many things I do not know, but here are the things I know for certain.

Nesta shouldn't have been expected to be the parent when the Archeron's fell into poverty. She was a child; she deserved a childhood too. Which had already been stolen from her by her mother.

Rhysand paraded Feyre around Under the Mountain, not for her protection, but because he wanted to control someone else the same way Amarantha was controlling him.

Tamlin did not sit on his ass for fifty years. The curse may have been a different type of abuse to Rhysand's, but it was still abuse. It was Amarantha telling him no one could ever love him besides her as he watched his friends die in vain.

Lucien was always the better friend. No explanation should be needed here.

Elain is a grown woman and should be treated like one. Elain is not 'Elain', Elain is an adult, who made choices like the rest of them.

Feyre shouldn't be High lady. If she wanted to be even close to being worthy of a responsibility like that, she would need more experience and knowledge than Morrigan, Azriel and Cassian combined, which she absolutely does not have.

Amarantha was a monster.

They all deserve a chance to heal their inner child. But in the situations they're in right now, they'll never get that chance.

One thing that makes me rage about ACOTAR every single day is that there is no mention at all about who did the household chores when Feyre was hunting.

It's canon that Feyre doesn't know how to cook. She doesn't do household work. She would spend the day in the forest hunting, which of course is a great thing in itself for a child( she was fourteen I think when she started hunting) but who took care of the house(hut).

Something tells me it wasn't Papa Archeron or Elain. In the first few chapters of Thorns and Roses Nesta had chopped wood twice(I think, it's been a while since I read the book). I'm assuming as there isn't much info about this that Nesta was the one to do all household work. There's cooking, cleaning, laundry, chopping wood, mending clothes, doing repairs around the house if required, groceries, and about a hundred other little tasks that keep a house running smoothly. Feyre didn't do it, Papa Archeron didn't do it, I can bet my life Elain didn't do it. Did magic faeries come to their house at night to do all this.

I don't understand where the narrative that Nesta was a spoiled and lazy girl who sat on her ass and didn't do anything came from. You know, my father had always told my sister and i, that whatever conflict we have between us, we should resolve it amongst ourselves. If you let a bunch of strangers know about the weaklinks in your relationships they will break you both apart. Of course, he tells us this due to our snake-ish relatives but honestly, when I had read about the relationship between the sisters, I wanted to scream at the book to not let the IC exploit their issues for personal gain. Which they did. That's exactly what Rhysand has been doing since he met the sisters.

I just remembered that Cassian sat across from Mor sipping tea while she talked about how Nesta should be in a dungeon or being tortured by being locked up in hewn city and he’s just there blown the fuck away by Mor’s beauty AND THEN LATER she winnows to Illyria where Cassian is training, ogles him and talks to Nesta about how she’ll never deserve him and how attractive he is

Nesta stood up for Cassian during the high lord meeting, in front of EVERYBODY and he can’t take his family aside and tell them to stop starting fights with her? He’ll stand in front of Mor when Eris is around but sit by and do nothing when Rhys threatens Nesta’s life?

He. Does. Not. Love. Her. Funny also that his attitude changed toward her after the war when she was taking other men to her bed. Sjm made her sleep around out of character so that nessian can have hate sex but sjm still virtue signals feminism as if Cassian in acowar wasn’t calling her sweetheart and Cassian in acomaf didn’t wipe away her tears in front of the queens and everyone. He promised her time together as his would-be last words. But then sjm writes that Nesta uses sex to cope and now all-of-a-sudden Cassian is telling her that everybody fucking hates her and that he never asked to be shackled to her. Making it clear she can only use sex as a coping mechanism if it’s sex WITH HIM.

Suddenly he’s not understanding. Suddenly he isn’t gentle with her. No, now he’s an incel who locks Nesta up until she caves and sleeps with him.

It’s hard to imagine a being with wings, who flies in the air, would want to confine his MATE to a house she can’t escape from. Azriel, too, was locked up as a boy and then acts as a prison guard against her? And for Feyre to be the one to do it when she was supposedly traumatized when Tamlin locked her in his mansion? I understand why elain packed her clothes and sent her on her way— she’s the type to save herself and if she sided with Nesta she’d be locked up alongside her.

I’m just saying, ACOSF is a lot to unpack and I’m still processing my shock and disgust years later. I truly can’t believe it happened.

Something I've really noticed in SJM's writing of Rhysand: She'll constantly say one thing about him but the writing will tell us exactly the opposite. Like she'll tell us that Rhysand is super feminist or some shit and we're just supposed to...agree. But he hasn't done shit to help Illyrian females who get their wings cut off every day. Making laws without enforcing them is useless. Which leads into my second point: She tells us 70 times a chapter how powerful Rhysand is, yet he's unable to force the Illyrians to follow laws? Pls be fr. She tells us he believes in the equality of all beings. Yet he sexually assaulted a 19 yo human and he separates the CoN from Velaris? And also says bOtH sIdEs MaDe MiStAkEs. Bitch stfu. She tells us this man is uber handsome and desirable. Yet he's had no serious relationship in like 500 years. Tamlin has had relationships with a ton of people as was stated in book 1. But Rhysand? No relationships or even casual fucks as far as we know. Bro is just celibate somehow. We KNOW Lucien is hot because everyone in Prythian plus the Children of the Blessed are instantly dumbstruck when they look at him and it ain't because of the scar lovelies. Plus we even have LUCIEN being out on border control "WITH SOME COMPANY!" As in he was fucking someone. Plus he had Jesminda ofc. And we have Tamlin being insecure (it's a retcon but whatever) of Lucien in ACOWAR when it comes to Feyre. We have SJM telling us Rhysand is super duper smart and shit. Yet I've seen no demonstration of even the slightest bit of tact from him. He couldn't even make the High Lords listen to a word he was saying without violence. But Nesta, a human just turned Fae, was able to make all of them listen without violence. We've seen Lucien use tact when he played spymaster in book 1, when he used his cunning to try and guide Feyre to the answer in book 1, when he and Feyre together use the Bogge to assert their dominance over the Hybern twins, and when he was able to send a sample over to his friend Nuan about the faebane. Plus there's the fact that he saw through all of Feyre's bullshit and he survived the cutthroat Autumn Court and he currently balances three roles while still dressing immaculately. She'll tell us Rhysand believes in choice. Yet she wrote Rhysand forcing himself on Feyre, Rhysand forcing Feyre into a bargain, not permitting her to go back to Spring, not giving her the necessary info to make a proper decision over ANYTHING in Night (biggest example of this is the Weaver scene), hiding her malignant pregnancy from her and restricting her movements, and locking Lucien and Nesta up in houses. I could go on but you know...

Sjm needs to realize that SAYING something doesn't make it true. You have to PROVE IT with the actions and storyline you undertake. ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS.