alex

Grief doesn't always look like crying. Here are some ideas for how to realistically portray it outside of the ‘screaming, crying, throwing up’ phase.

1. Burying Themselves in Work or School: Suddenly the most productive they've ever been, taking on extra shifts, extra assignments, anything that keeps their hands and mind too busy to land on the actual loss.

2. Avoiding Anywhere That Reminds Them of the Person: A restaurant, a route they used to walk together, an entire side of town. They'll go out of their way and never explain why, and probably won't even clock it as avoidance themselves.

3. Refusing to Change Anything of Theirs: The room stays exactly as it was. The voicemail doesn't get deleted. Moving even one object can feel like erasing them, so nothing moves at all.

4. Overcompensating With Normalcy: Laughing a little too readily, insisting they're fine a little too often. This one's great for a character who thinks showing grief means burdening the people around them.

5. Picking Fights With People Trying to Help: Grief makes people prickly in strange directions. Someone offering comfort can genuinely feel unbearable, and lashing out is sometimes easier than admitting they need it.

6. Taking Care of Everyone Else's Grief Instead of Their Own: Comforting siblings, managing funeral logistics, checking in on everyone but themselves. Tip: this one's especially good for an oldest-sibling or caretaker-type character, since it lets them delay their own grief almost indefinitely.

7. Sudden Reckless Behavior: Driving too fast, drinking too much, taking risks they never would have before. It's less about wanting to get hurt and more about needing to feel something other than the numbness.

8. An Obsessive Need for Control: Rigid routines, excessive cleaning, rearranging things that don't need rearranging. When one massive thing feels completely out of their control, controlling everything else becomes the coping mechanism.

9. Talking About Them in Present Tense: "She loves this song," not "loved." A small grammatical slip that says more about where their head still is than an entire monologue would.

10. Taking Up Something the Person Loved: Picking up their guitar, rewatching their favorite show, cooking their recipes. It's a way of keeping them present without having to say out loud that they're gone.

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Yes they are part of the IC, of course, but there is an 'otherness' about them that feels deliberate.

Cassian, and Nesta by extension, are heavily entrenched in the IC (I suppose to the dismay of many Nesta stans). From the very first scene when Cassian meets Nesta, there are all these conflicting emotions that are running through him, mostly because of Feyre and his loyalty to her, and he lashes out at Nesta at the dinner table.

As the story progresses, there is all this drama between Feysand and Nessian, warring emotions, Nesta hates Rhys, Rhys doesn't like Nesta, Feyre and Nesta are at odds, Cassian is torn between the two fractions. Add to that Mor, who's had a weird relationship with Cassian for 500 years and who flexes her muscle in relation to him very frequently. Plus, there is Amren, who also interferes at different times for various reasons. Rhys and Cassian have this unbreakable bond of brotherhood and there is a lot of push and pull between them, and in relation to the two sisters. Even from the very beginning, Rhys 'suggested' Cassian, not Azriel, as a potential lover for Feyre. When Rhys was telling Feyre about UTM, he again evoked Cassian saying that it felt like Cassian was next to him when Feyre was battling the Wyrm and in his head he heard his brother's voice 'if you don't marry her, I will!' And then of course in ACOSF, Feyre and Nyx are saved by Nesta.

It's a TIIIIIIGHT knot between all those people.

Which brings me to Az and Elain.

From the start, they are a couple apart. They don't match the dynamic or the behavior of the rest of the group. There is no bickering, no accusations, no push and pull. Azriel, while fully part of the Bat Boy Trio, is also...different. Too different. He is a shadowsinger, his powers far exceed Cassian's but aren't as strong as Rhys's, though Rhys is the only person that goes head to head with Az and then relents. Azriel is solitary and mysterious. He is a man apart in the Cassian/Mor/Azriel Trio as well. One who loves, but one who isn't loved. One who is pushed out, always forced to look from the outside in. Azriel is untamed. He stands up to High Lords, he sneaks into the Hybern camp. Once he says something, he goes after it. He isn't like the rest of them and remains an enigma even to those who are closest to him. Cassian doesn't ask him questions, knowing that Azriel wouldn't want to answer. Rhys misreads him and assumes that he knows him, but he doesn't.

And Azriel's love for Elain is a thing of secret, lovely beauty. It's private and his own. Only she is aware. Yes, some have started seeing the signs, but they are so subtle, no one is quite sure. Only Nesta, it seems, understands him.

Elain is the one apart from them too. She is kept in the dark, she isn't told things, she is left behind. The irony is that it's SHE who is the Seer. The one who actually sees everything (even through Azriel's darkness and aloofness). It's Azriel who Saw her Sight, and his words were 'SHE doesn't need anything. It's WE who need...' They need her, and they don't even realize it. They keep her away and push her aside, whereas she is the one with the Eyes.

it's SHE who shocks them. She sneaks up on the King and stabs him in the throat. She is the one who accepts Truth Teller. She is the one who volunteers to scry. She is the one who offers to beg Lord Nolan for the humans' safety. She is the one who finds the Suriel. She is the one who surprises Azriel with her gifts. The continuous theme about Elain is that no one knows her or understands her. Not her sisters, not her mate, not her ex-fiance.

To Azriel, she is always unavailable. When he meets her, she is engaged to a human. The moment she becomes Fae, she is mated to another. Yes, the pull is strong. It torments him. And while Rhys was willing to go against another High Lord for Feyre, and Cassian was willing to take on all of Nesta's darkness and brokenness, Azriel is willing to go against THEM ALL--The Cauldron, Elain's mate, ALL the High Lords, and his own High Lord.

Prompts for writing Eyes like that

☆ His irises looked like the universe got indecisive. Warm brown where it remembered being human. Purple where it forgot.

☆ Her eyes looked like what happens when sunset argues with twilight and neither one wins.

☆ His eyes were amber where he'd loved things and violet where those things had changed him.

☆ His eyes were heather and honey--the violet sprawl of Scottish moorland in late summer and the amber warmth of everything the bees made from it.

☆ His eyes were like a fairy tale told in two colors. The amber was once upon a time. The violet was the part nobody warned you about.

So you agree they’re obvious?

It’s not a fucking Sherlock Holmes novel. The romance in a romantasy series is supposed to be obvious. Some of these takes are why romantasy readers get a bad reputation…

Cassian was inexplicably drawn to Nesta from the moment they met.

And Azriel was, and still is, inexplicably drawn to Elain, to the point of questioning the Cauldron himself about why ELAIN, specifically Elain, isn't his mate.

Azriel can't sleep because he can't stop thinking about Elain. He's training more than usual because the second he stops, his thoughts immediately go back to her. He risked his life to save her. He tries so hard to keep his distance, even when all he wants is to be near her, because he knows that if he lets himself get too close, he won't be able to let her go.

There is simply no one else on Azriel's mind like this. No one else occupies his thoughts this intensely.

And people still want to tell me he doesn't care about Elain?People love using the stick scene between him and Cassian as "proof" that Azriel doesn't care about her, while conveniently forgetting that right afterward, he CHOSE to spend hours with Elain in the garden before going to the Hewn City. They also forget that, in that same scene, the protagonist herself wonders why Elain and Azriel aren't mates.

Watch this become Canon.

just look

at

all

this

YEARNINGGGGGGG

Remove the word "mate" from any interactions between Elain and Lucien. Read those scenes without the context of them being mates and ask yourself: are these two compatible? Do they show romantic interest in each other? Do their conversations and body language suggest a deep connection? Do they show care and concern for one another that exceeds the parameters of friendship?

Now, look at the interactions between Elain and Azriel. Read those scenes and watch the organic relationship development. Are these two compatible? Do they show romantic interest in each other? Do their conversations and body language suggest a deep connection? Do they show care and concern for one another that exceeds the parameters of friendship?