Too many thoughts...

Mm... on second thought... I don't feel like posting this rn

I love her difficult personality. She was interesting.

I understand that a lot of people hate her, but I've liked her from Book 1. From the moment all 3 sisters were going into the market and Nesta stepped in to shoo away the Children of the Blessed, and pulled Feyre aside to warn her to stay away from mercenaries, and especially when it was revealed that Nesta was so strong willed that Tamlin's glamor didn't work on her and that she went to those same mercenaries and tried to cross the wall to save Feyre. I knew instantly that I liked her.

So when Cassian was in her house in Book 2 talking about the past issues between Feyre and Nesta I was???? Confused??? Because didn't Feyre and Nesta move past that in Book 1???? Why is he bringing it up??? I thought we were over this??? And that has nothing to do with him? (Literally Rhys and Feyre weren't even dating yet, I think? So it was literally my sister's friend of a friend is talking shit in my house type of situation)

Sidebar: I wish any of my friends would take words out my mouth to talk shit about my siblings. Yeh, me and my siblings have beef sometimes, but that ain't got shit to do with you???? (Sidesidebar: I don't wanna see anyone trying to say "yeh but I bet your siblings didn't abuse you like Nesta did to Feyre". Stop. You don't know me, my siblings, or my life.)

ANYWAY lol

I, for one, am big on the idea of having a life away from your partner.

So Feyre's literal entire life revolving around the ic was a pass for me. And it actually annoyed tf out of me that Rhysand and The Pips (sry, Feysand and The Pips) were fighting so hard to make Nesta fit in. Because why? If you hate her so much, leave her alone. Don't want her spending your money? Send her somewhere else? The way they constantly verbally and mentally beat her down until she had no choice but to fit in had me grinding my teeth.

She's mean. So what? Amren's attitude was a million times worse than Nesta imo, the only difference is that Amren was a five thousand year old eldrich being the fey told bedtime stories to their kids about to get them to behave. No one says shit to Amren about her attitude because what tf are they going to do about it? Amren literally even says that she likes Nesta and her attitude because it was just like her. But the moment Nesta stops doing what Amren wanted her to do, now she all of a sudden has a problem with her attitude, lol.

We see there are a handful of examples within the books of people that have no problem at all with Nesta. It's literally just Rhys and The Pips that have a problem, and if Rhys has a problem then it's everyone's problem.

Literally.

We are literally told that Nesta was visiting Feyre, Elain, and Amren regularly on her own after acowar and that the only time she seemed to kick up a fuss is when she was being made to participate in ic gatherings. Sooooo.... besides Az, that means Rhys, Morgan, and Cassian were the problem. Rhys and Morgan very openly hate her, and after acowar she made it clear that she wasn't ready for whatever Cassian wanted from her, so she was avoiding him. And Nesta says herself that she didn't hate Rhys. She thought he was an asshole (because he is), but all in all she thinks he's a good male. (**she calls Rhys an asshole to Cassian, but after training when she sees Gwen/the priestesses move away from Rhys she notes how it made her sad (??) because he's a good male and would never hurt a female like that COUGH CHOKE)

Wow this post derailed from the main point

My point is: why does Nesta have to be nice/nicer? Why? And why is Nesta being blamed for everything bad that happened to Feyre when they were kids?

I'm not even joking. Every time Rhys did some shit to Nesta I was WAITING for Feyre to give him shit for it. Feyre does call him out for treating Nesta poorly on multiple occasions across FOUR (4) BOOKS (acomaf, acowar, acofas, & acosf) [I will say that it may only be called out in 3 books, but it's 3 at the very least]. And just when I think she's finally going to snap at him in acosf, it ends up being downplayed as a joke between Cassian and Rhys

Cass: oooh you know you're in trouble for what you did/said to Nesta... you send the staff away so they won't hear the wife nag at you?

Rhys: naaaah, I sent them away so they won't hear something else *suggestive eyebrow wiggle*

Bffr. Seriously? Did he really just sidestep the fact that he did something that obviously upset Feyre.... to fuck?

And the one and only time Rhys is called out specifically for how hypocritical it is for him to hate Nesta but be perfectly fine with Elain, he says that "Elain is Elain" bs (yall my blood ran so hot reading that line I had to put the book down for a moment). Like Rhys actually could've given about a thousand legitimate reasons for why he likes Elain but doesn't like Nesta, and he says THAT?

I'm not going to defend any of Nesta's actions cuz yeah she definitely was being a bitch for a good portion of the book, but also... she doesn't really owe them anything. Especially not her time or her kindness.

Listen. I'm of the opinion that no one owes anyone anything, so I don't wanna hear "well after Feyre did all that the least Nesta can do is blah blah blah—"

No.

I heard enough of that growing up. Enough of that, "I provided for you, so you owe me" bs (this isn't directed at Feyre specificly, since Feyre never actually asks Nesta for anything besides using her home for negotiations but that was a separate, unrelated occurrence). Absolutely not. Nesta didn't ask or tell Feyre to go into the woods. So why should Nesta owe Feyre for that?

I never really had the chance to like tamlin because the person who recommended acotar to me told me not to get attached to him, so I was riding the tamlin hate train until acowar. After I finished acosf, however, I started to reevaluate how I felt about pretty much all of the characters because I started to realize my feelings about some characters was influenced by semi-spoilers and after I finally caught up on the series I noticed my interpretation of the story was different then what I'd been told.

Once I realized that, I quickly got off the tamlin hate train and am currently (affectionately) riding the Rhys hate train lmao. (Affectionately, because, at the end of the day, I'm a bat boy stan, but I acknowledge that Rhys is kind of a pos too).

Tbh I still don't feel one way or another about tamlin (I'm not into blonds, sry), but it's a little wild to me how many people jump on hating him when objectively (subjectively) he really doesn't do anything. At least, imo he doesn't do anything to warrent all the hate. The hate he gets seems so wildly inflated compared to what he did, imo. Same with Nesta, actually. People treat them like they're the worst villains in fictional history, and???? To me, Nesta is a bully at worst (not to say bullies aren't bad, but people act like Nesta tossed Nyx off Ramiel or something). And Tamlin, most everything he does *from his point of view* makes sense to me. Not to excuse his behavior, but I find myself wondering if I would've done any different.

Like how people jump to defend Rhys for withholding information about Feyre's pregnancy. Tbh, if I were Rhys, I think I might've done the same thing. And when Tamlin joined forces with Hybern to get Feyre back...

Keep in mind that Rhys has played the villain for 500 years. For the last 50 years, he made everyone believe he was willingly working for Amarantha, killing and torturing innocence. (He literally put a severed head in Tamlin's garden in book 1 both to antagonize and warn him). That is the Rhys Tamlin knows. Tamlin has known Rhys as a villain for 500 years, but Feyre has known Rhys for what... 2 years? 3?? And Rhys showed a very different side of himself to Feyre. So Tamlin and Lucien believing that Feyre was kidnapped and mind controlled/manipulated by Rhys when that's what Rhys has been doing for 500 years is valid. When I look at it that way, Tamlin being willing to team up with his enemy to rescue someone (he loves) he believes to be in danger isn't *that* bad. And I probably would've done the same, if I'm being honest. Rhys has definitely done much worse.

Tamlin teamed up with Hybern to rescue Feyre. Feyre destroyed the Spring Court... because Tamlin tried to rescue her???? Rhys has mind controlled people to do things they wouldn't normally do (Feyre has, too), and Tamlin *knows* this. So ofc Tamlin is reasonably confused and concerned when Feyre (who had been riding the Rhys hate train pretty hard), all of a sudden writes him a letter saying "I'm in the night court with Rhysie~ I'm doing just fine so you don't have to come get me~ teehee~ ✨️". Let's also not forget that from Tamlin's pov, he doesn't know that Rhys has been teaching Feyre to read and write, so receiving a letter from "Feyre" was probably highly suspicious.

Tamlin also being over protective and overbearing to Feyre after under the mountain makes sense. *She* was his trauma. He forsaked his land and people to send Feyre back home and to protect her, but she came back and *died*. He lost her, and he doesn't want to go through that again. Obviously, as someone from the outside looking in, I think what he did was wrong. However, if I look at everything that happened from his point of view, he never had any malicious intent and did everything out of a want to protect Feyre. This ended up being a detriment to her mental, physical, and emotional well-being and ultimately drove her away, though.

It's like I sometimes say: sometimes you're not the one that's best equipped to help. Tamlin wanted to help Feyre, but he just wasn't the one. And trying to be the one only made things worse. (That and very poor writing/recons, but that is a different story).

Besides locking her up (seriously, I felt my heart crack a little at that part), I genuinely wonder if I would've done any different. I'd like to think I would've communicated with Feyre better and tried to help her through her trauma, but again that's outside looking in and I don't have 50-500+ years of trauma clouding my judgment.

Tamlin is the type to hope that his trauma will disappear with time (technically, a lot of characters are like this too, but this isn't about them). And going back to what I said about Feyre being Tamlin's trauma (or a very big part of it, at least), you see that's exactly what he did. He ignored the warnings and the triggers and hoped that it would eventually all go away/get better with time. And when you look at it like that, how many of us can really point fingers at him? I know a lot of people who ignore their problems and hope that they'll eventually go away. In that regard, do some people hate tamlin because his red flags are similar to their own, but they just don't want to admit it?

After Feyre dismantles the Spring Court, that's when Tamlin realizes that Feyre wasn't being manipulated by Rhys and that she was with him because she wanted to be. So his feelings turned sour as he felt she'd betrayed him. Which, again, considering Rhys *purposefully* played the villain for 500+ years, that's not a wholly unusual conclusion to come to.