Bat Boys and Archeron Girls

I invite the ACOTAR fandom to read the following analysis, in which I will put forth a rigorously researched, evidence-based argument that flawlessly explains why Elain Archeron will almost certainly have singing as her chosen art form, as opposed to Feyre’s painting, and Nesta’s dancing.

I think you'll agree that the reasoning is, undeniably, rock solid.

If Feyre paints:

And Nesta dances:

Then Elain must be the singer in the family:

I don't make the rules.

To clarify, this was satire.

The word twine or twining is used to refer to things that are woven together—two things that combine into one. Sarah uses this word to describe powers, vines and flowers, serpentine beasts, and romantic pairings. Is it possible she will weave these elements together in the next book through Elain x Azriel? Let’s take a look, shall we?

Azriel’s shadows twine around him, as Mor and Rhysand note below. They also behave like serpents, ready to strike when threatened.

Much like Elain’s vines of flowers twine on her dresser…

Or her Sight twines dream and reality, forging a connection between the two.

The carvings in Hewn City blend these elements together—serpentine beasts twine and devour one another as vines of flowers flow between them. A beautiful balance of life and death.

Like the serpentine beasts, the souls of mates entwine when they accept the bond. The threads of their bond weave together and their scents merge, or blend, to create something at once ancient and new. Something harmonious.

And so, perhaps this iconic scene is truly prophetic: there is already a bridge of connection between Elain and Azriel, one where life meets and merges with death.

And twining vines of flowers?

Looks like the perfect balance to me.

In Throne of Glass, Rowan smells like pine and snow, the same smell as Terrasen, Aelin’s home:

And the Night Court, Azriel’s home, smells like jasmine:

As does Velaris in particular:

Just like Elain:

Like Aelin with Rowan, Azriel will always be home as long as he’s with Elain 🥺🥰💕

I’ve discussed connections between the terms used for the beings of a higher, different existence across the Maasverse before. In Erilea, we learn Wyrd is believed to be destiny, the force that forms and governs all life, and in Midgard, we learn this force was conflated with a goddess of fate. The Under-King refers to her as a mother to all, a cauldron brimming with life, a secret language of creation, and a force that governs worlds. This is what I believe Prythian means by the Mother, Cauldron, and Fate (or Forces That Be).

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In Erilea, we also hear about the Goddess and her gods. Did Wyrd become this goddess, and are her gods the Forces That Be? Over the course of the series, the number of gods also comes in multiples of three (9, 12, 36). We get a real glimpse of these forces in Erilea through a memory hidden in a witch mirror and then again before Aelin sends them back to their own world.

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We learn they are all part of one consciousness and seem to represent different parts of creation. Light, shadow, wind, rain, song, memory. One of them is even three-faced.

Before Aelin opened a portal to a hell-realm in their home world, these forces were trapped in Erilea. Did some of them escape the onslaught from the hell-realm and regain access to Prythian? I’ve wondered before if that’s why we’re now seeing a foreign yet familiar presence in Nesta’s story (assumed to be the Mother by Cassian). Has the three-faced force—called the Three-Faced Goddess and Three-Faced Mother interchangeably—or another mother-like force, such as Silba, returned to Prythian after all this time?

Manon prays to the Darkness, to the Three-Faced Mother. We’ve heard that before:

Ironteeth witches have a symbol called the Eye of the Goddess. In the center of this symbol is the Goddess’s heart of darkness. This darkness is also connected to the land and Cauldron in acosf (and therefore Wyrd and creation, based on what we learned in hofas). Life and death and rebirth.

In acosf, Nesta finds the House’s heart in the pit of the library. She called the darkness of it the heart of the world, of existence, of self. And then she lets the darkness sweep in. Embraced it. This is a concept we see across worlds. The land also asks Bryce to open her heart to it and her own mother wears the symbol of the embrace between elemental forces of creation: sky (Solas) and earth (Cthona), light and dark. In Tower of Dawn, we learn the khagan still honor the Eternal Blue Sky and Slumbering Earth in lieu of the 36 gods their citizens are able to worship.

Cauldron save me.

Mother hold me.

Guide me to you.

Let me pass through the gates; let me smell that immortal land of milk and honey. (words from the prayer in acotar and acowar)

After Manon draws the Eye of the Goddess in the earth, Aelin reveals how she learned about the Wyrdkeys and gates from Baba Yellowlegs, an Ancient. She asks Manon if these things are part of the witches’ history.

And Manon says no, not in those terms. But perhaps…other terms? Like the Darkness, Three-Faced Goddess, Mother, Womb, etc. The conversation then turns to Rhiannon’s legendary curse of the land:

The punishment for the Ironteeth was a loss of their connection to the land. They lost their original, most elemental, connection to creation. The land remained barren for them until they broke the curse (and it makes @lovelydreamlight and me wonder if Fionn also cursed Theia and Pelias before he was dragged into the Bog of Oorid, or if the land is simply waiting for another embrace from someone with the right magic).

If some of those gods have returned to Prythian, will the characters have to unravel more than just the influence of the Asteri? Many have theorized about Sarah building toward her own version of Ragnarök, the doom of the gods in Norse mythology. @merymoonbeam pointed out that this doom was prophesied by a seer, and it might help explain why Elain’s story is necessary next and is intertwined with the priestesses.

The priestesses called Aelin’s fall through their world an ill omen, but she was actively working toward a better world just like her counterparts in the Night Court.

To Aelin, whose life had been written by her ancestors and the gods long before her birth, a better world meant a world with no gods, no fates.

Funny how these words have the same energy as Elain when she says I hope they all burn in hell and I belong to no one. Could Elain use her magic to unravel these influences and help their people build a better world?

Please don't screenshot or share this post without credit.

Disclaimer: I've only read CC once, and then only recently, so please forgive any glaring inaccuracies in this crack pet theory of mine, about a hypothetical CC and ACOTAR crossover in ACOSF. I apologise if this theory already exists, I haven't explored the CC tags at all yet. 💜

Spoiler warning: contains plot spoilers for ACOTAR, CC and TOG series, ie. all of SJM's works to date (September 2021).

I know I'm not the only one who picked up on all of the 'the darkness in the library is a cat' references in ACOSF, and I had wondered about them a little, but until I read Crescent City last month, I didn't have many thoughts beyond the darkness potentially being multiple entities, and not just the heart of the House of Wind; maybe Koschei’s shadows were there, too, or some remnant of Bryaxis? However, when I finally got around to reading CC (thanks to @sciencebaetch and @rminnieola for getting on my case), and had a couple of weeks to digest everything, it struck me that there were some potentially significant parallels between the two books.

Given this is a crack theory, there will be a few unanswered questions included, as well as points to take away and mull over. If you have anything to add, please feel free!

Thank you to @rhyssescups for fact-checking this before I posted it.

What do we know about Aidas?

Aidas is the handsome, blonde haired, and opal-blue eyed demon Prince of the Chasm, also known as the fifth level of Hel. He "yields" only to two brothers, the Prince of the Abyss (the sixth level), and the Prince of the Pit (the seventh level of Hel).

When he enters Midgard's universe without being summoned, he uses the form of an equally blue eyed white cat. We have already had a TOG crossover with ACOTAR (the red star), so what if the Hel realm that is linked to Midgard is also connected to Prythian's world? Elain once uttered "I hope they all burn in Hell," about the Mortal Queens, so it appears that Hel/Hell is a common theme between the two universes.

Previously, Sarah mentioned the forces that be in relation to fated mates, and in her most recent interview (while she’s been editing the upcoming acotar books), she reiterated her interest in free will versus fate, and used the term nature instead. Sometimes, nature gets it wrong when it comes to mating bonds.

It got me thinking about the forces that be, their connection to nature, and it led me back to the chaotic part of the Book of Breathings. This part of the book sings in threes as well as three parts (here, here, here). That pattern makes sense if this part of the book harnesses the creative magic of Chaos.

Part 1 describes the cycles of nature, specifically the stages of life (life and death and rebirth), solar and lunar cycles (sun and moon and dark), and flora and fauna (rot and bloom and bones).

Part 2 welcomes the three Archeron sisters with three distinct hellos; it’s also possible the first two are for Feyre, and the last one combines Nesta and Elain.

Part 3 gives instructions on how to bring the Book of Breathings to life and use it. This allows certain people (those not born of this world, including Made Fae) to control the forces of nature through things that channel it: the Cauldron, Trove weapons, mating bonds, and even the land.

The Book welcomes the three sisters as though it knew they were marked by fate and have an important role to play in the grander tapestry. @psychee92 theorized years ago that this part of the song might even be a prophecy for the three Archeron sisters and indicate their alignment with specific phases of the triple goddess. They certainly seem to be the three faces of the Mother in the flesh. I have wondered if their connection aligns with specific parts of the life cycle, but it is probably more fluid than that since their arcs seem to represent the progression of nature overall.

@silverlinedeyes, @offtorivendell, @merymoonbeam, @psychologynerd and many others have talked about their connection to Made objects. This unique kinship (as vessels) makes them similar, if not the same as, those who are Starborn. We see this kinship begin in the original trilogy through Feyre. She wields magic from nearly all courts (unless the sisters’ lineage is connected to Dusk and it becomes 8), restores the Book of Breathings, hears the Cauldron’s siren song like her sisters, touches the Cauldron to travel with it like a force of nature, and repairs the Cauldron and tear in the world with raw magic from Rhys.

This kinship expands in Nesta’s story, as she both uses Made objects and Makes them herself:

The Harp asks Nesta to play it, to let it sing again.

The House sings because Nesta Made it.

Nesta Makes weapons and it is accompanied by music only she hears.

The bond she weaves with Cassian sings after they Make it together.

The whole world, all of creation, is a song.

Nature can be influenced through song, as @silverlinedeyes and @offtorivendell suggested. This song is a poetic way to describe communication—different parts of nature working together in harmony. This communication is the secret language of Wyrd and in hofas, it is referred to as the language of creation. This connection deepens in the crossover:

The land of Dusk asks Bryce to reach out, open her heart to it, so it might sing again.

Love me, touch me, sing me.

Bryce does not free the land of Dusk due to the presence of the prisoners, but she does free Avallen and we get a glimpse of what that entails. She can hear the land’s quiet song, feel its joy when it is finally seen and freed from its magical chains.

These moments are seeds for the third sister’s story, bringing us full circle.

Elain has always been very connected to nature. She ended the original series as a promise of the future and feeling eager to restore the land.

In acosf, we see hints of how deep this connection might run. When taken together, we find Elain’s appearance reflects the land: in Hewn city, she looks as void of life as the land and in Velaris soon after, she is glowing with life again. This kind of earthen magic would mean that she can sense ley lines—the flow of life in the fabric of the world—and Make gardens. Is that what might happen when her sleeping buds bloom?

Will she need to fully embrace them and what they represent (all of her, including her forced change) to make her magic sing? Many of us believe she was given the vision and gifts to help restore the inherent, pure magic of the land. To free it from the magical threads of the Asteri: the magic they hoarded in sacred peaks and the division they wove into the land and the people who inhabit it. This freedom would, in turn, restore the people and their magic. The land and its magic would be freed for all of them, not simply a powerful few. This plot extends beyond a single court and would certainly demand a big story.

It might also require behavior we don’t usually associate with Elain: using pure life, if she possesses it, to unbind warped threads (the opposite of what Feyre and Nesta did with their healing magic). She might even learn how to do this through her sight as she wanders with the Mother (that’s why her carved rose is placed next to her figurine). Will she come across a healer from another world in her travels? This particular healer may be the key to learning that pure life is world-making power. She can bind as well as unbind the very fabric of life, of worlds.

Elain’s rose gold ring with a bright moonstone is giving:

And that sterling silver underneath?

(Shoutout to @silverlinedeyes for sharing this excerpt with me from Crystal Vaults)

Bringing hidden truths within to light?

An amulet for travelers?

A gift of lovers for passion?

A channel to prophecy?

A strong link to the moon and the natural rhythms of our mother, Earth?

I can’t wait for her story.

the regency-coded in question: