Eluciey

[Concept Art: Azris, Stepping into the Light]

First art piece I've posted in a while that has not been related to some type of event! I might touch this up later and repost a refined version, but I needed to get it out before the perfectionism devil got to me :)

Brief Azris Rant (related to this art):

I think these colors sum up how Azris feels in my head. They're (the colors and the characters) not particularly vivid for their own sake, but together they blend very well. I did try to give Azriel's siphon and Eris's crown a stronger kind of glow (because of their strong connections to their roots). I also wanted the swirls to look a little like shadows and a little like smoke.

TLDR; they're soulmates, your honor

And shenanigans ensue

Yet some readers seem incapable of accepting that because they're approaching an adult romance series with an incredibly juvenile understanding of love and immature mindset, not to mention forgetting these are books, not anyone's real fucking life. SJM has never written cookie-cutter, instant-love romances where attraction magically switches off the moment the "right" person appears. Her characters grieve past loves, struggle with unresolved feelings, confuse desire with compatibility, and slowly figure out what they actually need. Thats what gives her a story to tell in the first place.

On a basic human level, adults are capable of finding more than one person attractive over the course of their lives. This shouldn't be a controversial statement, yet parts of this fandom react like it's the end of the fucking world.

And TBH, that reaction to me says more than they probably realize. It suggests how they either a lack of real-life relationship experience or have an incredibly rigid, all-or-nothing view of love, as if attraction must be singular, permanent, and somehow contaminates every relationship which usually follows a mindset far closer to purity-culture thinking than it is to healthy adult relationships or the romances SJM actually writes.

Normal mature adults experience attraction, heartbreak, desire, growth, and then move on. You can have chemistry with someone who isn't your endgame. You can genuinely want someone and later realize they're fundamentally incompatible. You can build a healthier relationship with someone else.

If your entire romantic framework is "once horny, always soulmates," you're applying the emotional logic of a middle-school crush to adult fiction and it is also completely out of step with how Sarah writes.

SJM repeatedly builds romances through false starts, unresolved feelings, lingering attachments, romantic misdirection, and relationships that teach her characters what they actually need. She creates tension by allowing characters to desire one thing before ultimately leading them somewhere else. She's done it in series after series. Acting like she won't continue is playing stupid. She has literally told her readers that she likes her characters to have multiple love interests.

So treating a moment of attraction as permanent proof of endgame. especially before the characters have even completed their arcs, is cherry-picking scenes you like while ignoring the bigger picture.

What annoys me most is how often their arguments rely on projection instead of the text. Some readers can't separate their own beliefs about romance from the story they're reading, so they insist a character who was once attracted to someone could never authentically love anyone else.

And don't even get me started on the people who argue as if these characters are autonomous human beings instead of fictional constructs.

"They would never do that."

"She's too ugly."

"He'd never choose her."

Because, as soon as you do, I know you are a dumb fuck that's treating fictional characters like they have free will outside the narrative.

Sarah decides who the characters find attractive. Sarah decides who changes. Sarah decides what gets emphasized, what gets foreshadowed, and who ends up together. The characters aren't making independent decisions behind the scenes, they exist to serve the story she's telling, but some people are too fucking stupid to get that through their heads.

And lastly, another issue is instead of asking, "What is the author trying to communicate here?" the question becomes, "How can I reinterpret this so it still supports my ship?"

The irony is that they'll accuse everyone else of "reaching," while simultaneously inventing interpretations that the text simply doesn't support.

We're talking essays about how "skittered" is actually positive because... fishing? Come on. You know damn well Sarah wasn't expecting readers to connect a fleeting verb to recreational fishing.

The same thing happens when they flatten characters with obvious hero's journey arcs into villains, make accusations that directly contradict the text, or continue arguing against facts Sarah herself has already clarified. Gwyn's age is a perfect example. Sarah has stated she's 28, a full adut, yet years later they are still fucking insisting otherwise because the actual answer doesn't fit the narrative they've built in their heads.

That's the pattern.

They don't start with the text and follow where it leads. They start with the conclusion they want, then retrofit every scene, symbol, word choice, and cherry picked interview to support it. If Sarah writes something that doesn't align with their ship, suddenly it has a secret meaning. If she explicitly confirms something they don't like, they dismiss it, minimize it, or pretend it doesn't exist.

If the story doesn't go the way they've convinced themselves it will, be ready for the hate directed at Sarah, and the fandom rather than at the assumptions they made while reading.

The irony is that SJM isn't responsible for readers deciding the ending years before she's written it. Every major fandom has a subset of people who become so attached to a particular interpretation that any outcome contradicting it must be explained away as "bad writing."

Suddenly it'll be:

"She ruined the characters."

"She forgot her own books."

"She changed her mind."

"She did fan service."

"She retconned everything."