For anyone that’s interested, here’s my goodreads review of ACOSF. I made this the day after reading it, so my thoughts and opinions have been further cemented, but unfortunately I ran out of space to write anymore to it with evidence. Maybe I’ll write a longer review here ♀️ (depends if I can be bothered wasting more energy and head space on acotar )
Ayyo how are we all forgetting the women’s rights movement of 2021 when our feminist icon rhysand chose not to tell his very pregnant wife that the birth would 100% kill her
He pretty much went around battling misogyny with his mountain shaking roars y'all could never-
I don’t understand Gwynriel fans. All Azriel does is display social interaction for the first time in five books with a girl and the fandom’s already coming up with baby names for 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).
I need a straightforward reason from Elain haters why they actually hate Elain!!
Cause I, can’t find one logical explanation for all this hate!
1. They can’t hate on Nesta anymore
2. They ship Azriel with someone else
2.5 coz poor Lucien for some reason
3. They finally realize how she failed her sisters in many ways too and for the longest time Nesta (or Feyre) is the only one getting blamed while Elain gets away with everything coz she’s nice and quiet and she’s being held accountable now (I fall into this camp and IMO the only valid reason to criticize Elain on)
nah before acosf we knew nothing about her, she barely had any lines or appearances in the books so we couldn’t really judge her on her motives. everyone was indifferent to elain until acosf
her treatment towards nesta was gross— nesta made sure elain had the time and the space to grieve UNBOTHERED to then spit on nesta for falling apart?? THEN HOMEGIRL punishing nesta b/c she supposedly co-opted her trauma when in reality elains suffering is one of nesta’s triggers. yet no one understood that?? elain deserved that loyal dog comment and much more. where tf was elains loyalty???? what’s even worse is the sjm isn’t even going to ADDDRESS this in the following books.
apparently only nesta can be held accountable for her actions. god this book makes it so hard to re read
There was nothing in Nesta’s head but screaming. Nothing in her heart but love and hatred and fury as she let go of everything inside her and the entire world exploded. The baying of her magic was a beast with no name. Avalanches cascaded down the cliffs in seas of glittering white. Trees bent and ruptured in the wake of the power that shattered from her. Distant seas drew back from their shores, then raced in waves toward them again. Glasses shook and shattered in Velaris, books tumbled off the shelves in Helion’s thousand libraries, and the remnants of a run-down cottage in the human lands crumbled into a pile of rubble.
—ACOSF Ch. 74
The moment Nesta finally erupts.
There’s no question I, along with many I’m sure, have been waiting for this since ACOWAR when Amren said to a Nesta in the early stages of grappling with her power, “When you erupt, girl, make sure it is felt across worlds”…
Since ACOMAF, after what the Cauldron did to her, tried to do to her, after males with power and violence in their fabric forced her to be irrevocably changed, after that violation…
Actually going all the way back to ACOTAR when we see a brittle Nesta hardened by a life in which, even before her family lost their material comforts, Nesta was groomed to objectify her very self in the most insidiously innate way, leading her to accept the idea of an abusive husband if it meant fulfilling that narrow understanding of her supposed duty and purpose…
The imagery in this moment is really fucking powerful for me. Especially that of her cottage in the human lands crumbling, the cottage where she felt and experienced formative trauma, and here I mean of the familial variety. The dynamic in the Archeron home at the start of ACOTAR is so familiar to me in its toxicity (because I experienced something like it in my family growing up). It’s a tragedy.
And yes, earlier in ACOSF Nesta did find hard won peace in a final visit to said cottage with Cassian at her side as partner and support, but here?
The rage that is always there, even if it’s calmed by a life lived well, is finally expelled so others might see it, feel it, have their worlds shaken by it. It’s vital and essential and wonderful.
Mark this one down as one of my favorite moments in Nesta’s story. ✅
I don’t have the words to express just how incredible these insights are and I thank the writer for sharing them
Thank you for this positive feedback and you’re welcome! I’m so glad my little reflections on the growth of our favorite queen resonate with more people than just me!
when i remember that cassian couldn’t even win over nesta the way a normal man should and could genuinely only get her when she was at the lowest, most vulnerable headspace of her life and when she was literally locked in a house with him so she had no other options and was practically forced to give him the time of day
the way the house of wind (a literal house) made nesta feel better, provided her more comfort, made her laugh and smile more times than cassian in the entirety of acosf
it bothered me so badly when nessian slept together on solstice and their bond snapped into place and they cried and promised to be together forever and then cassian … still got up after they fucked to leave the room and then nesta had to physically ask him to stay with her
would it have been so hard for that 500+ year old man child to take some initiative in his relationship and tell nesta he was staying with her? what was even the point of getting up to leave after such an emotional joining between them? it honestly just soured everything for me like STOP
and instead of running away for a week straight after and avoiding nesta and probably making her feel so insecure and worried that he didn’t actually want to be with her forever … couldn’t he have just sat down with nesta like a grown adult man and explained to her that their mating bond snapped into place but she didn’t have to accept it if she didn’t want to?
it’s so hard to explain why i disliked cassian so much in acosf but it’s because of all these little things that he dissapoints me over and over again in that just add up until he’s barely decent and just a shitty partner over all
‘you’ve been given an order. you know the consequences. if you don’t get off that fucking rock by the end of this week, what happens next is out of my hands’
not cassian threatening to send nesta to her death in the human lands if she doesn’t do what he says and follow his orders every time i try to get past my passionate hatred for acosf cassian i remember him threatening nesta and i become more convinced that the cauldron punished nesta for stealing it’s power by giving her cassian as a mate
i just know nesta sleeps beside cassian with one eye open knowing he could lock her up in a house at any moment, could take her on a hike and revel in her punishment until she faints after a couple days due to exhaustion and dehydration, and is in danger of having her life threatened by his besties with zero chance of cassian standing up for her
So a couple weeks ago I met Official Hambly and we collaborated to do the ultimate Nesta Archeron photoshoot from the ACOTar series by Sarah J Maas. She put together the entire dress in under a week and I styled the wig the evening before the shoot. We both love Nesta so much and her story in ACOSF. I cannot say enough about this photoshoot. Shooting with Sarah was honestly one of the best times I’ve ever had in cosplay, and it certainly was a dream come true to cosplay as Nesta!
“Nesta around Gwyn was a wholly different creature than who she was with the court. They didn’t tease or laugh with each other, but an easiness lay between them that he’d never witnessed, even when Nesta was with Elain. She’d always been Elain’s guardian, or Feyre’s sister, or Cauldron-Made. With Gwyn … he wondered whether Nesta liked the girl because with her, she was simply Nesta. Perhaps she felt that way around Emerie, too.” -ACOSF Chapter 27
Whenever someone asks me why I love the Valkyries I’m just going to show them this quote.
In the Night Court with the IC and even in their old house with the Feyre and Elain, Nesta still had to hold up a certain image because she was so used to that after being around these people after so many years or just because of the things these individuals heard about her.
With Emerie and Gwyn, there’s none of that. Neither of them had any sort of negative reaction to the animosity Nesta displayed.
““He does, but I am …” Fine. If the female could be blunt, so could she. “I’m cut off.” Curiosity flooded the female’s eyes. “Why?” Nesta stiffened. “I don’t know you well enough to tell you that.” The female shrugged.” -ACOSF Chapter 9
“I doubt you’ll enjoy the way I speak to most people,” Nesta said. Gwyn snorted. “Try me.” Nesta looked at her from under lowered brows again. “Get out of my sight.” Gwyn grinned, a broad, bright thing that showed most of her teeth and made her eyes sparkle in a way Nesta knew her own never had. “Oh, you’re good.” Gwyn turned back to the stacks. “Really good.” -ACOSF Chapter 9
Both of these women just understand Nesta and from the very first moment looked past her front. There was no history between them before they met, no Feyre or Elain to talk about their messed up family dynamics, no high tension first meeting, there was nothing but a clean slate for the eldest sister and that’s what she so desperately needed in my opinion. If there’s one thing I adore about Nesta’s journey it’s that she was able to find two friends, two sisters who see, acknowledge, but also look past her faults and love her.
I just absolutely adore these girls and I’m so excited to see their dynamic more in the upcoming books.
