The Night Court is a hotbed of cronyism and definitely to its detriment. Cassian has been a “general” for hundreds of years and yet remains admittedly inept at political manoeuvring and socialising with anyone outside of his family; Azriel is repeatedly fed bad information and is so terrible at spying that he resorts to butchering people for information instead, and is extraordinarily racist against the Illyrians; Mor can’t interact with anyone from the Court of Nightmares without having PTSD flashbacks, and yet it’s seen as appropriate for keep sending her there as an ambassador; Feyre is 22, clueless of Prythian’s history, totally reliant on Rhys for biased information about their political neighbours, and after learning how to write 1 year ago I imagine her written communication is abysmal—I don’t even want to know how she manages anything related to maths—and yet “her word is law”; and Amren repeatedly displays a desire to blow up entire cities or engage in conquest and that’s just tolerated.
All of these lawmakers, these all-powerful members of his political Inner Circle, wrestle daily with unresolved trauma. Rhys does not have a single emotionally healthy person in charge. And when all of this untreated mental turmoil comes out as some atrocity or violation of the rights of others, it’s just ~shrugs~. Their own people, and in fact a lot of other people across Prythian, are accepted as collateral for their squabbles with other rulers, or as meaningless casualties of their temper tantrums. Because of the positions of power they hold, their trauma becomes everyone else’s problem, with 0 accountability—and boy do they make the most out of that. Unreal that they haven’t been invaded or overthrown at this point.
Rhys encourages the Velaris locals to ostracise the citizens of the Court of Nightmares—to refuse them goods and services, as a punishment because he dislikes their leader, as if this isn’t a powder keg of social unrest waiting to blow. He steals from and attacks their neighbours with his daemati powers, not to mention openly orchestrating a plot to destabilise a neighbour. He allows (his idea or no, it happened on his watch) low-income housing to be destroyed in Velaris just to make a point to his sister-in-law. He cooks up this image of himself as a villain for 500 years and then expects his contemporaries to just blithely believe him when he says “oh i’m a good guy actually”. He lies through his teeth about everything, even to his wife, and rather than make any attempt to bring Keir’s army onside, he instead actively makes personal enemies of the Court of Nightmares’ leaders and civilians. The law against wing-clipping in Illyria is not enforced (why was Emerie’s father not prosecuted? How can Rhys be powerless to stop the men clipping the women’s wings, yet maintain enough control over the Darkbringer army, even when the CoN locals actively hate him, to send them out to fight on his behalf? He is the most powerful High Lord in history, and yet the wing-clipping is completely beyond him?) and he hoards an obscene amount of wealth, far too much for it to be believable that he is not economically exploiting his people outside of Velaris. In order for one person to be that rich, other people have to be poor.
It’s kind of shocking that Velaris hasn’t yet been besieged. Although it’s explicitly stated that the Illyrians are disenfranchised enough to want to rebel—only they are terrorised out of doing so by threats from Cassian.
what is it with people seeing a woman who is a general and actively fights in combat and going “ah yeah i bet she wears sexy dresses with boob windows” LIKE. my good sir. what the hell are you on? you need to wear appropriate clothing in a war zone. it’s so obvious that so many people can’t imagine a hot woman who’s not wearing a form-fitting sexy dress with her breasts out.
So in ACOFAS Nesta is still clinging to her character of being clean, holding herself up, and having pride.
Yet
In the flash forward to ACOSF She is apparently filthy. Has dirty clothes, dirty apartment, never changes her sheets, show up to the IC summoning looking and smelling gross.
WTF either something major happened (probably the same thing that broke up her friendship with Amren) or SJMaas forgot her characterizations and book cannons.
So Feyre starts off thinking about her sister, her thoughts and feelings. But the moment she has any discomfort all thoughts of Nests and her needs go out the window. As long as Feyre is comfortable and as a easy life everything is ok.
Pinterest is usually pretty good at catering to my taste and keeping up with my interests, but now it suddenly decided that I’m really into that Court of This and That and Whatever series.
Like. Everything I ever heard about those books is the exact opposite of what I’m looking for in a story, plus none of these people are even pretty.
you know what? fuck you. just fuck you. i already know this book is not about nesta or her journey to grow as a person or heal from her trauma. how dare you dedicate 1233 pages of garbage, toxic relationships propaganda and full of self hate for girls out there who are feeling helpless? what are you trying to teach them? fuck you.
I jokingly said i was in offended over sjm use of Celtic names and somebody asked why I felt like I was lying when I told them I wasnt actually offended. So I thought about it some more.
It’s not necessarily being offended, but it’s how she mashes different cultures together and doesn’t seem to care of things are done properly. She takes the history of different cultures and warps it to fit her narrative.
From using Celtic names to now having Valkyries. She picks and chooses what she uses, not bothering to be consistent in her world building. It’s not even being influenced by a certain culture, she just literally takes a part of it to put in her books.
She talks about slavery in tog, but she doesn’t engage with the issue or present anything meaningful. Instead, she uses it as part of her narrative and she uses the suffering of black people to provoke sympathy for a white woman.
She never makes an effort to understand the history of these cultures or myths and just takes what sounds ‘cool’ and puts it in her books.
Everyday I wake up thinking about how Manon would actually help Nesta with her training but not only would she try to understand her motivations or why she did what she did but try to make Nesta get through her negative emotions IN A HEALTHY WAY.
yes, janet— you finally did it! book stans are finally aware that your precious high lord is a shitty person and no, it was never feyre’s choice! congratulations!
Feyre began shaking. “If I die …” Her gaze drifted to one of her tattooed arms. She lifted her head, eyes bright with tears as she asked Amren, “You … all of you knew this?”
[…]
“Rhys knew?” Tears spilled down Feyre’s cheeks, smearing the paint splattered there. “About the threat to our lives?” She peered down at herself, at the tattooed hand cradling her abdomen.
This scene genuinely hurts, and not at all for the reasons sjm likely wants it to. It hurts because it makes it so painfully obvious how very young Feyre still is, and how much she trusts Rhysand, who is actually not at all worthy of that trust. How much she is at a disadvantage in the power dynamic in her relationship, even though she firmly believes she isn’t. It hurts because the first thing this twenty-one year-old girl thinks of when she hears that she is dying is that her husband will die with her.
This is all wrong. Everything about this situation is just so, so wrong and I just want Nesta to take Feyre and run far, far away from these people.
Azriel thinking he should and is entitled to be Elain’s mate because her sisters are his brothers mates and he has feelings for her, while Elain has been talking about not wanting a mating bond in the first place for a long time, should already show that he is not thinking about what she wants whatsoever, and that makes me furious.
like maybe i’m just a toxic person but i think feyre nesta and elain having a screaming match would have added more to the book in terms of a sister relationship than that twilight baby plot ever did
like look me in the eyes and TELL ME nesta elain and feyre yelling about how they failed each other or whatever wouldnt have been a more satisfying resolution over elain being passive aggressive and feyre and nesta not caring about each other for 699 pages then having magic baby solution, i will simply tell u ur wrong
this got me thinking abt how nesta’s arc in this book (no i will not call it a healing arc, fuck that) is SO centred around the men the narrative seems to think she’s wronged. like? all of her problems are either family-related or war-related but it all gets pushed to the side in this book, and for what?
i could accept her father being important in her arc, bc he obviously falls under the banner of family problems, but s//jm not having nesta have those conversations with her sisters (or even deal with her mom problems) speaks SO LOUDLY here. but apparently there’s plenty of time for the narrative to go on abt how cassian is sm better than her & she doesn’t deserve him & etc etc. even her relationship with RHYS gets more actual closure than her relationship with her sisters, and once again it’s her making some grand gesture to make up to rhys for whatever bad thing the narrative thinks she did to him.
but fuck complex relationships between women though!!! fuck nesta’s healing bc that would require her to spend more time with her sisters & other women and this book is too busy making her grovel for men & shoving her into a shitty relationship with the guy who called her unlovable & never really apologized for it!
how. heh. how much you wanna bet sj///m saw the S&B trailer and is now fuming. if her new agent holds the rights, i’d say it won’t be long before they’re sold
it is very interesting and very annoying how in ac0sf, s//jm makes nesta’s Thing dancing. bryce’s Thing in c/city was also dancing. another point in the “s//jm is so unoriginal her series are slowly losing their individual features and becoming more and more similar over time” column.
Nesta watched the shadowsinger with a frankness that most people shied from. Azriel returned the look with a stillness that most people ran from.
Even Feyre had been hesitant around Az initially, but Nesta considered him with the same unflinching assessment she laid upon everyone.
Maybe that was why Azriel had never said a bad word about Nesta. Never seemed inclined to start a fight with her. She saw him, and was not afraid of him. There weren’t many people who fit that bill.
hfhf?fhfdhfhhf???fhfhf?fhf?Fhhfhfhf?fhfh
idk man i’m outta words
Oh nice so she just admits he’s a bully picking on easy prey. :)
don’t you just love when sj///m is accidentally self-aware when she writes?
Ngl tho nesta has shown way more genuine interest in azriel than she has in cassian lmao
SHE HAS! and he actually shows genuine care toward her well-being, as evidenced when he asks if someone pushed her down the stairs.
what a sentence that is damn
New canon: aroace azriel and aroace nesta trying to find a good girlfriend for their lesbian BFF mor
In light of the horrible treatment of sapphic/queer coded and/or woc characters by sarah janet, it’s time for some malide x mesta x nehemia/sorscha fics, and if I can’t find them I sure as hell will write them.
People act like Nesta is like ten years older than F.eyre. She’s only three years older. Elain is only two. F.eyre, Nesta, and Elain were all children/teenagers during their years of poverty. Nesta is being blamed for being…a child. People act like she’s a psychopath and not a physically and mentally abused childduring those years. Like she never forced F.eyre to do anything. F.eyre made those decisions herself. F.eyre chose to go in the forest, no one let her — she went. She has always had the choice to just not hunt. Like I feel like people blame Nesta and Elain for F.eyre’s decisions! They were all teenagers, they were all victims — Nesta even more so when the were in wealth.
TW: SA
THIS !!! also nesta sitting there waiting for her dad to get his act together instead of bailing them out is genuinely what i think i would do in that situation
like he was the parent?? why should his minor daughters fix a problem that he created? why did he leave his youngest daughter in a position where she had to become the sole breadwinner?
idc about his disability nothing happened to his brain he still knew how to train and had some useable skills. feyre going to the forest gave their dad an excuse to do nothing and sit back while his daughter did it all and neither nesta nor elain forced her to make that decision.
it’s not nesta’s fault that she chose to leave her dad to fix his own wrongdoings and get his shit together. plus it literally said in acosf when she finally realised that he wasn’t going to do anything she tried to find her own way of helping (marriage) but then she got sexually assualted and feyre had started hunting by then anyway.
was nesta kind of a bitch in acotar? yes, but that was normal sibling shit; not abuse or anything that actually warranted a redemption arc. rhysand and the inner circle had no right to treat her the way they did for how she dealt with a situation that they could never even imagine (esp after all the trauma she had faced before then).
