🩷🌸

march: “they said two new titles soon. okay, april for sure.”

april: “okay… maybe may.”

may: “no no, june has to be it.”

june: “well… i guess it’s definitely july then.”

early july: “it’s probably coming around mid-july.”

mid-july: “okay… end of july. it has to be the end of july.”

and now we’re almost in the last week of july.

i’m honestly so tired of people projecting their dislike of Elain onto Sjm herself.

you don’t have to like Elain. that’s completely fine. but saying “it feels like Sarah doesn’t enjoy writing her” is such a wild conclusion to draw from a character who literally hasn’t had her own pov yet.

and that’s not evidence that sjm dislikes writing Elain. that’s how the narrative has been structured. Acotar has never been a true multi-pov series. we spent an entire trilogy in Feyre’s head, then got a novella, and then one book focused almost exclusively on Nesta and Cassian. unlike TOG, where multiple povs allowed several characters to develop simultaneously, Acotar has always chosen one main perspective at a time.

OF COURSE Elain has been kept in the background. how else was Sjm supposed to save her story for her own book? (a book she CONFIRMED)

and we’re talking about the same author who has repeatedly described Elain in positive terms, called her a “quiet dreamer,” and even said she’d probably be the character she’d most want to be friends with. like, WTF are you even talking about?

so no, i don’t think this has anything to do with Sjm not enjoying writing Elain. i think it’s people letting their own feelings about Elain shape the way they interpret everything, including the author’s intentions.

what frustrates me is that this kind of narrative keeps getting repeated until people start treating it like fact.

I’M CRYING

i’m literally having a crisis right now...english isn’t my first language, so i thought this made sense, but now i’m second guessing myself.

what i meant was the argument people always make when they say, “you can’t love elain and criticize nesta,” or “why is elain forgiven while nesta gets hated?” it was supposed to be a very simplified way of referring to that whole discourse.

i’ve had this in my bio for a while now… is it wrong?? 😂😂

can anyone who speaks english better than i do tell me if it actually makes sense, or if i’m using the wrong phrasing?

except… we know that’s not the only issue. and if we’re being honest, most acotar couples (i’m talking about all the ships) don’t actually have any real external obstacles stopping them from being together. the only couple with genuinely established external barriers is elriel (maybe helion and loa too, but we all know we’re not getting a book about them).

even if we ignore the mating bond itself, they still have rhys explicitly forbidding azriel from pursuing elain, the political consequences of that relationship, elain being left feeling rejected after the bonus chapter, and azriel’s own self-worth issues that the bonus chapter spends a lot of time exploring.

i don’t know how any of that is a small or easily resolved conflict. 🫪

and then there’s the argument that “azriel only exists as an obstacle for elucien.” but if sjm only needed an obstacle, graysen was already right there. elain could’ve simply stayed in love with him (not making graysen that bad) , and that alone would’ve complicated things with lucien. instead, sjm introduced an entirely different love interest who isn’t her mate and spent time developing that relationship.

anyway, i just don’t buy the idea that azriel is only a plot device or that their story lacks romantic tension. if anything, i think it’s the exact opposite💃

ME : “actually, imo, I think those things were set up to develop in separate stories and then all come together in a final climax, like SJM does in so many of her books. She can easily send some characters on missions without showing us everything they’re doing. Besides… what is Elain supposed to do in the meantime? we can’t pretend she doesn’t exist. ACOSF literally sets her up as finally being ready for something much bigger.”

X : “We’ll see in October 😘”