#antiacowar

I know that there’s a not-small portion of this fandom that just kind of :) isn’t it good these books ended at acomaf :) But like...I genuinely, genuinely think that would have been better? I think that almost the entire story/driving force of ACOWAR was...totally unnecessary tbh. Feyre (and Rhys, I suppose) could have had her story tied up beautifully in two concise, well-written books. I could MAYBE stretch to an ACOWAR that had wildly, wildly different content to tie up any loose ends but...This thing should have ended at ACOMAF. 

This series functioned at its best when it was purely about Feyre. And functioned at its worse when it went beyond her, and the entire narrative just swallowed her character, and her soul. 

I didn’t care about Hybern. I didn’t care about the war. I didn’t care about the wall. I didn’t care about...Literally any of the driving forces in ACOWAR. It got too big too quickly and it tried to become something it wasn’t. It tried to take a story about an ordinary girl’s struggle to save herself and her family and twisted it into the story of an ordinary girl’s struggle to save...the entire world and everyone in it. Which is just...Too big. 

The stakes were too high, and yet they weren’t, because I genuinely didn’t care. Hybern was a paper-thin villain, the war was so poorly cobbled together (and lasted like...two minutes??), the politics were non-existent, the world-building was...even more non-existent, the plot was Bland af. I didn’t care about any of it. And I think that’s a huge reason that ACOWAR fell flat, because there was nothing to care about any more. 

ACOTAR was Feyre’s struggle to save her family, save the ones she loved. Her family, and then the man she fell in love with. It did end in a struggle with her against a Big Bad in the form of Amarantha. (who was also pretty paper-thin tbh) But that worked because at its core, the narrative revolved around Feyre. It was a singular narrative told through her eyes, and even though she did do the whole ‘saving all of Prythian thing’ that wasn’t the driving force, it wasn’t what the narrative asked me to care about. It asked me to care about Feyre. Her family, her goals, her loves. And I did. 

ACOMAF was Feyre’s struggle to save herself. She has crippling depression, PTSD, and is in a twisted, abusive relationship. Again it has a very narrow focus, it has a very limited scope, and there’s plot things that go on around it related to the whole Hybern/war scenario but, honestly? That was all there to drive the characters, to drive Feyre, and to drive Rhys. And that’s the only reason it worked. Because the characters are what we were invested in by that point, not the fairly woeful plot, so you kind of overlook that weakness because the heart of the novel is there and it’s enough. 

You care about Feyre, the Circle, Rhys, Nesta, Elain, Lucien, etc, etc. It’s a very, very narrow focus. And I’m sure I sound like a hypocrite rn because I’m sure I whined about this and how narrow that focus was, and how I wanted the world to broaden but...I take it back. That’s not what I wanted at all. Past!Lauren was a goodamn liar. The narrow focus was the only thing that made this series work. 

Because as soon as we hit ACOWAR, and the stakes changed, and the focus changed, and that narrow tunnel-vision we’d had for two books suddenly erupted into full-scale ‘got to save the world you know nothing about and really aren’t at all invested in’ it got......Bad. 

Because ACOWAR was the complete opposite of ACOMAF in the worst possible way. It was a reversal of the driving force and the things that are being used to fulfil that goal. In ACOMAF it was Feyre, her darkness, her recovery, her story, and the plot kind of existed here and there to nudge that along. In ACOWAR the Plot suddenly takes centre stage and Feyre gets shunted off to one side and suddenly I’m asked to care about this huge war, and this whole end of the world and I just...don’t. 

Especially because Feyre got...Completely and utterly lost. She went from a focal point, the heart of these books, the thing everything revolved around and that a reader was in any way shape or form attached to....To a camera. She existed to show us what was happening in this big, bad world we didn’t give a toss about. That was it. There was no individual goal, there was no focus, there was no purpose.  

I think if this series had done what it set out to do, and didn’t try and force itself to become something it wasn’t, it would have had a lot more success. Either as a duology with some slight tweaks here and there to the narrative that allows it to fully end Feyre’s story in ACOMAF. Or, aye, okay, go ahead and make it a trilogy but not with a war. Not with a desperate bid to save the world. Because it’s boring. 

Because I’ve read variations of it a hundred times before and I’m never actually interested in reading them again. I don’t care if this world ends. I care more about Lucien stubbing his big toe than I do about this war in ACOWAR. I’m here for the charaters and they all got either fucked over, written OOC, written so badly it was painfully boring (I’m looking at u Rhys), or completely swallowed by what was supposed to be their story. 

Not every series has to escalate to ‘protagonist saves the whole entire world aren’t they great?’ to be a story worth telling. 

ACOWAR could have continued Feyre’s recovery, it could have actually told the stories of various other survivors (Rhys/Mor/Lucien etc) and given them the development and the dignity that they deserved. 

It could have showed Feyre’s struggles with being High Lady and integrating into this culture that she really doesn’t know a huge deal about, and the challenges that come with that. It could have been a novel about rebuilding after Amarantha. Introduce the other courts that way, by having them come together for Prythian as a whole to recover and rebuild and let that link with and resonate with Feyre’s recovery arc in ACOMAF.

Always here for some shadow bat ^_^ From this post 

Headcanon A: what I think realistically: Prepare for Unpopular Opinions. E/riel happening right now is not realistic. Azriel has been in love with Mor for five hundred years, he isn’t getting over that just because Elain has suddenly appeared, pretending otherwise is plain wrong. Azriel has had lovers, yes, but there’s a BIG difference between a lover and a committed relationship. 

Az isn’t ready for a committed, balanced, healthy romantic relationship at this point. He hasn’t been for 500 years. I think with everything that happened in ACOWAR people forget the stasis that moriel was in in ACOMAF and the reasons behind it...None of which were Mor and none of which have changed. 

It’s canon that if Mor, whom Azriel has loved and desired for five centuries, had stripped in front of him and offered him everything he wouldn’t have accepted it because he doesn’t think he’s worthy of her. Az needs to sort himself out and get himself into a healthier frame of mind (which is not the responsibility of Mor or Elain to encourage) before he’s ready for any kind of relationship. Az knows this. 

Az is actually a pretty fucking dark character. There’s a lot of childhood trauma in there and a lot of continuing trauma from his role in that court. However reserved or composed he is, it’s not possible to walk away from brutally torturing and killing people without any psychology trauma, and that’s on top of the unresolved issues from the abuse he suffered as a child as well as his struggles with his self-worth and identity. 

Also, like, even if all of that wasn’t just a thing, I don’t get how anyone thinks it’s in character for Mor to come out to Az and him to just nod his head and then jump straight into bed with Elain. Like. This is something that he and Mor have had between them for five hundred years (whether or not they have been or will ever be romantically together, they love each other, they’re family, there’s a lot of history, a lot of baggage, and a lot of things that they need to work through together and get some closure on) 

Mor coming out to Az is not (better fucking not, I’m done with ‘is not’ with these books I don’t have that kind of faith in them anymore) going to be framed in such a way that involves Mor giving Az her “blessing” to be with Elain. Go fuck yourself with that, like, how fucking disrespectful is that to both Mor and Elain??

 Like people keep saying that Azriel deserves better than someone else’s mate but what about Elain? Does she not deserve better than being someone’s second choice? Does she not deserve better than being Azriel’s consolation prize because he couldn’t have Mor? Because however this is written there is no way in hell that e/riel can be done without that being the implicit way Elain’s narrative story goes. 

And Az too actually, like, he has to deal with this huge fucked up bombshell which, whichever way you slice it, is one of his best friends and a woman he’s deeply in love with basically saying, yeah, hi, I’ve been closeted for 500 years, I’ve been sleeping with men I didn’t really want to to keep distance between us, I’ve been petrified of telling you this....That’s going to be something that he needs time to process and work through with Mor? 

He deserves that time. He deserves to be given the ability to properly process his trauma, to come to terms with himself, his past, his place and his worth. It’s not respectful to his character, arc, history or narrative to just shoehorn him into another relationship ten seconds after one he’s committed five hundred years of his life to falls through just because there’s some desperate need to pair every single character off into a hetero relationship. 

Headcanon B: what I think is fucking hilarious:  Okay it’s maybe not necessarily hilarious, it’s probably more along the lines of adorable, but Az knitting as a method of stress-relief is still my favourite thing ever. Especially because like, he has a very taxing, stressful job, right, so he’s probably never done knitting. Which means that the Inner Circle all get the things he produces because he doesn’t know what else to do with them. 

Rhys’ favourite is a pair of thick, fluffy violet mittens. Feyre gets an oversized, deep blue jumper that she basically lives in. Nesta loves her earmuffs (black, plain, reserved, Az gets her). Elain has a little flower-patterend tea cosy (she refuses to let Lucien heat it up she insists on getting out the tea cosy instead).   Lucien has a hat and matching scarf that Elain always makes him wear when he goes to the Winter Court. Cassian has “wing-warmers” which were definitely a joke but he wears them constantly, he’s very proud of them. They’re bright pink with yellow stars, one of the reasons he loves them so much is definitely because Nesta can never not laugh when she sees him in them. Mor has a little knitted bat that sits on her bed. Amren threatened to incinerate him if he tried to give her anything. (she probably still ends up with a pair of socks or something she insists she despises but actually wears quite a lot in winter) 

Headcanon C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends >:D Actually I’m not sure I want to do this to Az. His general existence is heart-crushing :/ So let’s indulge in some more fluff. Azriel’s house is in a fairly quiet, remote area on the very edge of Velaris. There aren’t a lot of people (which he likes, sometimes he just needs to get away and he deserves and needs the peace and calm) but there are a fair few stray cats. Azriel definitely doesn’t feed them. Nope. He’s a hardened shadow-singer, a member of the inner circle, he strikes terror into the heart’s of his enemies. He is definitely not leaving out bowls of food for these cats. And he definitely doesn’t take them in and let them sleep in the house during the winter. 

Actually, I don’t have a huge amount of issue with the concept of a death pact as a bare bones idea/plot point/source of conflict/what have you. 

The problem in s/jm books is the way that it’s romanticised by the books, and later, inevitably, the fandom as well. @valamerys has talked about this before, I’m sure, and better than this, but it could be an interesting dark twist, or source of conflict, just as long as it’s pointed out as being that way. 

But it isn’t. In both instances (as far as I’m aware in T0D with the healing thing anyway) it’s presented as a positive thing. it definitely is in ac0war, the idea of the two lovers never again being parted because if one dies then the other dies with them, is presented as romantic and desirable and ‘oh look how much they love each other, they’d rather die than live without them’. When that’s...deeply unhealthy. Like, people, there’s a goddamn reason romeo and juliet is a tragedy. 

From this post

Headcanon A: what I think realistically: This is...Sort of coming from recent fandom salt I’ve wanted to address but, essentially....Mor was massively OOC in ACOWAR and not at all what she was written as in ACOMAF. Unreliable narrators cannot be blamed for sjm pulling the teeth out of Mor as a lazy way to cause drama and conflict within the book. 

Mor was not only thought of as powerful by Feyre she was powerful. She is Rhys’ third in command, Rhys states, in canon, that she is far more powerful than either Cassian or Azriel. She’s had a fight with fucking Amren and walked away from it. She is a queen who rules both Velaris and the Court of Nightmares. She is Rhys’ most trusted confidant. She was a war veteran with an incredible amount of power that had every high fae family in Prythian wanting her married into their family. 

None of this is bias from Feyre’s POV because she saw Mor as greater than she was because she rescued her from the Spring Court. These are the unasailable facts that we were given in ACOMAF. The inconsistency in ACOWAR is not a nuance in storytelling or a way to add depth to Mor’s character or Feyre’s relationship to her...It’s straight up lazy and it’s bad writing. 

Mor suddenly standing on the sidelines of every battle was OOC. Mor’s power never being touched on at all when pretty much everyone else’s was was lazy and a writing decision. Mor being thrown under the bus to cause conflict with Rhys and being undermined by her abusers (and mocked for it, repeatedly) is not a result of her not being as powerful as we first thought, it’s a result of SJM not being able to write consistently or respectfully or giving a fuck about her characters. The sexuality mess was a result of SJM and not some quirky, interesting, “oh she’s the truth-teller but look at all these lies in her life it’s so ironic isn’t it?” Nah it’s just lazy as fuck and I’m tired. 

Mor is powerful. Mor is confident. Mor is strong and inspirational and everything she was sold to us in ACOMAF. SJM made a goddamn mess of her character and her arc in ACOWAR. For the love of god stop writing this off with nuances in character and storytelling; stop giving credit where criticism is due instead. 

THIS GOT OFF TOPIC BUT I’M SALTY AT EVERYTHING YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO DEAL WITH IT. 

Headcanon B: what I think is fucking hilarious: Cassian and Mor both going to Rita’s at some point. Mor watches Cassian spend the entire evening flirting with a beautiful woman, charming her with every ounce of his skill in that area and being very sad when he goes home alone. Mor smugly turns up to breakfast the next morning wearing the girl’s shirt and leading by the hand. She proceeds to innocently introduce her to everyone at the table and Cassian just straight up DIES at the injustice of it all. 

Headcanon C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends: Usually this is like....My Thing okay, my main thing, I am the angst and the angst is me and it’s just what I’m here for. But frankly, Mor has been fucked over enough by canon and fandom alike so I’m just...ONLY GOOD THINGS HERE. So I’m replacing this with “Headcanon C: what this character fucking deserves”: and I’m answering it very simply: everything. 

Right, this is not going to be a popular opinion, but it’s all I’ve got. My issue is that Mor’s story is so framed by heterosexuality that at this point it feels like it’s written for straight people more than queer people. 

Think about it. Mor’s story is bookended and influenced entirely by straight men. The first choice that she’s able to make about her body and her sexuality, this grand life-changing statement that she makes in order to escape marriage to another man because she can’t stand the idea of becoming a broodmare for him (largely, according to acowar, due to her identity as a queer woman) is to have sex with a straight man. 

Her relationship with Andromache comes to an end partially because of the war but mostly because of...Another straight man/the need for the queen to have children. Which she does. 

She doesn’t come out/isn’t open with her lovers in part because of homophobia (which is...a straight thing. The entire concept of coming out/remaining closeted is for straight people. It’s not for queer people. Being closeted isn’t doing me any good, I don’t do it for the fun of it, I do it because I have to...Because of straight people’s reactions. This is a reality of this kind of story.) 

And in part because of Azriel’s love/lust for her. Azriel. A straight man. Whom she can’t be with because of her sexuality. Because he has assumed that she is straight and therefore interested in him. And here’s where I have a huge issue with the heteronormativity argument. 

Mor’s story, the way it’s written, is not something for queer people to relate to in-terms of heteronormativity. It’s something for straight people to relate to. 

Consider: Straight man falls in love with a lesbian, assumes she’s straight, and therefore he has a chance with her. Lesbian informs straight man she’s a lesbian and therefore she can’t be with him. Straight man is sad because heteronormativity has fucked him over and all the hot girls are lesbians, how dare queer people exist and trick him into thinking they were fuckable!? 

This is like...Mor’s narrative with Az (and the readers) in a nutshell. Azriel falls for Mor and the reader ships Moriel (as intended by SJM in ACOMAF (I will fight on this point. She set this up as a ship. She set this up to be shipped. I don’t give a fuck if Mor never outright said she loved Az or however else you want to argue it. She. Set. This. Up. To. Be. Shipped.) 

Then Azriel and the reader get fucked over/upset by heteronormativity. Both assumed that Mor was straight/would be interested in Azriel. Both are wrong and upset when Mor comes out as queer because their expectations were ‘ruined’ by Mor’s sexuality. 

This looks a heck of a lot like the disgruntled straight dude complaining that the girl he was hitting on was gay but hot and dared to make him like her because he assumed she was straight. This story is a lesson in heteronormativity for straight people. Because it’s ‘haha, look at that you shipped the queer woman with the straight dude but she’s not interested what a great plot twist right!!!’ 

Wrong. 

Mor’s narrative is framed by heterosexuality. She sleeps with Cassian to avoid a marriage to a man. Her relationship with Andromache is ultimately doomed because she gets married to a man and has his children. She remains closeted from the Circle because she’s petrified’ of coming out to Azriel. She continues to sleep with men that she appears to not want to (regardless of what she SAYS I am looking here at what the narrative SHOWS us and that is, three times, that Mor looked ill and tortured after sleeping with Helion. She did not enjoy that. She did not do that for herself. She did that to keep Azriel at bay) 

So, yes, there’s heteronormativity involved in Mor’s narrative but it’s from the POV of a straight person when it comes to it? If this was a story about drawing the problems queer people face with regards to heternormativity then we might actually have some commentary on Mor apparently getting nothing out of sleeping with men but doing it for Az, and her saying that she ‘find pleasure in it’ wouldn’t feel like SJM was throwing that in there just to try and make her (disgusting) narrative of a queer woman sleeping with people she doesn’t want to to reinforce her boundaries between the straight man who hasn’t gotten over her after 500 years because oh no quick! Mor gets something out of this too!!! But that’s what it feels like. And it doesn’t line up with what the narrative has actually SHOWN us (ie - that Mor isn’t getting anything out of sleeping with men at all) 

And when Mor comes out...What she gets as commentary for her being closeted all these years is “It’s good enough” (which is...the more I think about that line the more I utterly fucking despise it, just putting that out there) While Cassian and Azriel get, oh the poor things, she’s stringing them along, she’s hurting them, that’s what the narrative gives us. 

And fandom does this too? The overwhelming response to Mor is not ‘the poor girl has been alone and isolated for 500 years, has gone through things like the death of Andromache alone, working out her sexuality in the first place alone, hiding herself alone, not being able to have a lasting relationship with anyone because she can’t be open about it alone’...No what we have is ‘poor Azriel :(’ ‘Poor Cassian :(’ ‘How will the others react to her coming out? :( they’ll feel all bad that she didn’t trust them :(’  

It’s just....Mor’s queerness does not feel like it was written for queer people. Mor’s story feels like it was written by a straight person with a straight person’s pov and “”””struggles”””” with queer people at the forefront. It feels like a sloppy tick in the diversity box that got shoehorned in there to generate Angst and Conflict. 

The biggest problem I have with this is that, FOR ME, Mor’s story...Does not feel like it’s about Mor. It does not feel like it’s about queer people; it feels like it’s about straight people.

 It’s about Feyre, and Mor coming out to her as like...An apology or something? And then it’s about her being so Good and Accepting and promising not to spread Mor’s secrete around like this makes her the greatest person ever when all of the above is basic common decency. 

It’s about Azriel and how upset he’ll be that he can’t be with the girl that he loves, nevermind that he’s trapped her in a deeply unhealthy place for five centuries. 

It’s about the Inner Circle and how this will change their dynamic and how it’s ruined everything because this is not a safe space or a place of love and support any more. It can’t be.

It’s about Cassian and how Mor apparently needs him to buffer her and Azriel and therefore he can’t be with Nesta. (The biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever had the misfortune of laying my eyes on, btw) 

It’s even about Eris and how this gets shoehorned into his retconned redemption because it’s implied that he knows and wouldn’t have raped a queer woman because he’s That Good A Guy. 

It’s not about Mor. It’s not about her struggle finding herself. It’s not about her struggle overcoming the homophohbia she lived with and learning to love with. It’s not about the women she can’t be with and how this hurts her. It’s not about the men she forces herself to sleep with and how fucked up that is. It’s not about her feeling unsafe and unable to be herself around her family and how fucked up that is. It’s not about heteronormativity confusing her and making it difficult to understand what she wants and who she loves.

 It’s not about her. It’s not about her identity. It’s about how everyone else reacts to it, how everyone else affects it, how she affects everyone else because of it. This is not a queer story. This is the story of a queer person and the angst, conflict and drama their identity can cause for the straight people. 

Mor’s story could have been about this. Mor’s story could have been about how queer people are raised in abusive, homophobic environments and escape them, find safe spaces, find love and acceptance, but it’s not. It’s about a woman who apparently owned her body, her life, her choices, but has in fact never escaped the abuse she suffered because it’s still ruling her. 

This is something that real people experience, yes. Mor is not a real person. Not in this regard. Mor is a fictional character and with that comes a certain responsibility of representation. You cannot just brush aside queer pain with ‘well people experience it in real life I’m just making it realistic!’ Because this is not real life. This is not even the real world. This is a fantasy in which the only ‘reality’ that can apparently exist for queer people is pain, isolation, fear and being alienated from those they’re closest to because of their sexuality.

Mor was presented to us as a confident abuse survivor who is empowering and inspiring for the characters (and readers) of the books who are still recovering from what they’ve been through. She is presented as having complete control of herself and her choices. She has a family built up of supportive, empowering individuals who support her, give her power over her abusers and allow her to be herself. 

This entire narrative is undone in ACOWAR because she has not escaped her abusers. She is still being ruled by them. She does not have power over them. She does not own her body, her life and her sexuality, because the narrative has been forcing her to live a lie her entire existence. Straight men own her sexuality and her body and her life. Because she sleeps with people she doesn’t want to to appease them. This began with her sleeping with Cassian to escape Eris and her father’s will and continues right up to present day when she’s sleeping with Helion to push Az away. 

Mor has no power in ACOWAR. She is not allowed to be herself around her family. She is not allowed to make her own choices because she is ruled by her being closeted. She does not have power over her abusers - Rhys takes that away from her. She does not have a safe space as an abuse survivor or a queer person either in Velaris, which is taken from her, or even in her Circle, because she cannot be herself around them. 

And what does ACOWAR have to say about this? What does the book that tore Mor to pieces and shredded the inspirational symbol it created of her have to say about the way she’s treated by the author because of her sexuality? 

“It’s good enough.” 

That’s the message this book sends to its young queer readers. It’s good enough. She can’t be herself but it’s good enough. She isn’t accepted but it’s good enough. She’s trapped in a relationship with a man who loves her that she can’t escape because she won’t hurt him and that’s good enough. She sleeps with men and doesn’t get any pleasure out of it to keep her safe from another man’s attentions and that’s good enough. She cannot have fulfilling relationships with women because she cannot be open but it’s good enough. She is closeted and petrified and still suffering from the abuse she endured years ago, without any power, without any agency over herself, but it’s good enough. 

It is not good enough. It is not nearly good enough. This kind of reality does not have a place in fiction. When your reality comes from a place of hate and oppression it is not something that I want to see again in fiction. I do not want to see queer women forced apart by straight men/their obligations to bear children. I do not want to see queer women closeted and terrified and not able to be out because of the effect her abusive family has over her. I do not want to see a queer woman sleep with men when she gets nothing out of it but feels she has to do it to stop anyone looking too closely. I do not want to see queer women experience tragedy in fiction.

 I already see this every day IRL. I know what this is. I know what it feels like. I do not need to be educated in this. I do not need to have a straight person try and tell me my own story.

 I do not want to read about this in a work of fiction that is, by its nature, an escape from the real. I don’t want it to be an escape from the real in every single way except this one because this, gay pain, gay angst, gay tragedy, is something that must be preserved because how else can we tell gay stories? 

Fiction has a chance to change what is wrong with this world. Fiction, especially fantasy, like these books, has a chance to explore different options. Fiction cannot simply reflect what it sees IRL because that tells me nothing, it does nothing, it changes nothing.

 Fiction has a chance to tell the stories that we want told in this world but sometimes find it impossible to do so because of the way it is.Fiction should be progressive. Fiction offers a chance to be better than we currently are, to change things, to move things forwards.  

TL;DR: Mor’s story is not about Mor. Mor’s story as a queer woman is about the straight people around her. Her entire narrative is framed, driven and ultimately controlled by straight people and straight responses to her identity, not her identity in and of itself. 

This was not written for queer people. This was, at best, a sloppy tick in the diversity box because ‘look she’s queer what more do you want?’ and at worst a damaging and misguided insight into how SJM sees queer people and their stories. 

No. 

Rhys was introduced to us as a complex, morally-grey character who always showed hints towards an alternative character and an overarching positive motivation in his actions UtM. He changed as his situation did and as Feyre came to understand more about him without ever renouncing the characteristics he’d demonstrated to Feyre, and us, in ACOTAR. 

I haven’t and I’ve had a few requests @thinkaboutgunsnroses this is for you too, so here we go: 

First impression- Went like this: Step 1)- Feyre is described as “serious” Step 2)- M I N E. 

Impression now- I have a lot of confused and conflicted thoughts about Feyre’s arc and journey to the end of ACOWAR but...At the core of her character, I love my serious, socially awkward, dense potato daughter. I love her character very deeply. Her story is another matter.  

Favorite moment- Oooh hmm. First thing that springs to mind tbh is this line/part: ‘I laid my hand flat on the table. “I can eat, drink, fuck,and fight just as well as I did before. Better, even.”‘ which is CRIMINALLY underrated. 

Idea for a story- Apparently I feel saltier about this than anticipated but like: some kind of AU in which Rhys does not exist and Feyre establishes a court of her own in the middle and/or the human realm because apparently every monster in Prythian is super chilled with her and she has the powers of every high lord and she saved all their asses, why can’t she have her own damned court? The Archeron sisters save the day and push the high lords into working with each other while at the same time rallying the humans, the lesser faeries, the female Illyrians, the females trapped in the CoN and Feyre ends that story with the same amount of agency she had at the beginning :)  

Unpopular opinion- The more I think about it the more I hate her storyline in ACOWAR. She felt so much more like a camera than a character and this no longer felt like Feyre’s story (which it should have been) 

Favorite relationship- Feyre/Rhys is great and all but I still think the dynamic that intrigues me the most and is actually the most complex and interesting is Feyre and Nesta. There’s a lot of tension and there’s a lot of conflict and friction but there’s also a lot of love and a lot of understanding and actually a lot of acceptance by the end - these two sisters learn to take each other as they are, not as they want them to be. It’s just interesting. Also can I have more of Feyre/everyone in the Inner Circle operating outside of Rhys, please? 

Hi! I think (this is all me personally, you’ll have to ask other folk for what they think about them) But I think that, it’s not so much messing with the author’s characteristics (though I think it is much easier to get feyrhys ‘wrong’ in fic or what have you because there’s so much potential canon to contradict) but I think, for me, the volume of canon means that...Their story has been told? 

We’ve seen basically everything with them, we’ve watched them fall for each other and we’ve been told pretty much everything about them. Personally, I can have a lot more fun with the side-pairings because we don’t know as much about them? We know enough to understand and write and talk about the characters but we don’t have everything written down for us. There’s some room to play with the secondary characters, I mean, look at the number of nessian/moriel/elucien fics that were written between acomaf and acowar and then contradicted? They all told different versions of exactly the same thing - a story that’s been told for Feyrhys. 

There are, obviously, still plenty of things to do with a main ship and a lot of people have them as their otp/go to for writing and reading fic and producing other content but, personally, I just find the other ships more compelling because I can do my own thing with them a little bit more and I find that personally more rewarding? 

l also tend to do this with all fandoms so this might be a me thing. It’s a genuine miracle I enjoyed feyrhys enough to produce anything for them, tbh, because I usually just don’t go for the main pairings. It’s like yes, okay, this is there, that’s very nice, let me get invested in this teeny, tiny rarepair that has about four other shippers and one fic (that i wrote) and have my soul squished. 

As for ACOWAR....Like, to be completely and utterly honest with you? They felt a bit flat to me? I wanted more. They were compelling in ACOMAF, they were interesting, there was a bit of tension and push and pull and it wasn’t easy and that’s what made it an interesting read. ACOWAR was just....There was no conflict between them? They almost became one single character (which isn’t good) They just agreed with everything the other said, argued away the mistakes the other made, smoothed everything out so much it just got dull.