larryalbum:

ok i’m about to say something a little crazy but considering that loml is played in reverse in the album teaser, perhaps the song is telling a story backwards? from the last verse about getting to know someone to bemoaning being separated (it’s unfortunate, just coordinates) to talking about how things aren’t the same anymore and finally to the first verse about bringing this person with you in your heart whenever you have to leave them and being able to have fun together no matter what you’re doing

and the constant throughout the whole story (the chorus) is that this is all about the love of your life and you’ve spent your whole relationship unwillingly leaving them behind

feyre archeron// “the archer”

i’m so excited about this one bc ‘the archer’ by taylor swift goes with feyre’s character arc and journey so strap in before i take you through this. 

“Combat, I’m ready for combat
I say I don’t want that, but what if I do?”

so this starts off when feyre is still with tamlin at the start of acomaf and she’s feeling very helpless and sidelined. she is telling herself that she would just be happy being tamlins wife and being lady of the spring court, but seeing the growing conflict around her, she questions this and wonders if she might want to do more. 

“'Cause cruelty wins in the movies
I’ve got a hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you”

she wants to speak up for herself but she doesn’t have her voice yet. when we are in her head we see all the objections she makes, but almost never actually ever says. feyre and tamlin’s communication is horrible, and obviously this is not good for them.

“Easy they come, easy they go
I jump from the train, I ride off alone”

i think this part represents her finally leaving. she is now without tamlin and feels alone. she’s thinking about how nothing in her life has really been constant and she feels like no one will stay for her. 

“I never grew up, it’s getting so old
Help me hold onto you”

feyre never had a real childhood. when her father lost his fortune she was still pretty young (14 i THINK?? i don’t really remember exactly) and she took over taking care of her family. her mom also asked her to watch over her sisters for some reason… which is a lot to ask of a youngest sister. I think this kind of resulted in her never truly fully developing on her own. as soon as she was free from her past life and role in her family, she was with tamlin so she never got to be her own person. she doesn’t really know how to hold on to someone bc she feels abandoned herself.

“I’ve been the archer
I’ve been the prey”

okay so clearly feyre is actually an archer, she killed the faerie in the woods in the first book. this also kind of represents how she sees herself as a monster, especially after under the mountain. she questions her humanity after she had to take innocent lives– she feels like a murderer. feyre has also been a victim, with under the mountain probably being the best example when she was treated like filth and actually ended up being killed by amarantha. she was also treated like a caged animal with tamlin– she was made a victim by him.

“Who could ever leave me, darling?
But who could stay?”

HAHAHA DARLING so i think this song is like spoken to rhys and she’s letting him see all of her insecurities. she’s questioning why everyone in her life has failed her and has left her to fend for herself, but she also doesn’t blame them bc she feels like a burden and a monster. 

“Dark side, I search for your dark side
But what if I’m alright, right, right, right here?”

so this is directed at rhys and its perfect because she’s looking to see if the dark side of him that he displays is even there. initially she is obviously very skeptical of him tries to find out what is actually true about him– she does find a dark side but not what she was expecting, but a softer one that’s a result of his past and that he’s stronger for. the next line is about her mental health during that period where she first gets to velaris. feyre still feels hopeless and doesn’t know what she wants or if she even wants to get better. She was clearly in a bad place and, later she tells lucien, “when you spend so long trapped in darkness, lucien you find that the darkness begins to stare back.” it took a lot for her to get out of that mindset and into something healthier. in the prologue she even wonder to herself in her dream if she had always been this broken inside.

“And I cut off my nose just to spite my face
Then I hate my reflection for years and years”

i think of this part as being the scene with the bone carver where feyre admits that if the last faerie she had to kill hadn’t been tamlin, she would have stabbed herself. she hated who she became because of that experience, and it made her hate herself after. i also think a connection could be made to the ouroboros mirror since it shows the darkest part of you, and feyre had a problem with coming to terms with what she did, until she was finally able to face herself in the mirror. this also could be about how physically she was weak and looked sickly until she came into her own and healed at the night court. 

“I wake in the night, I pace like a ghost
The room is on fire, invisible smoke
And all of my heroes die all alone
Help me hold onto you”

feyre has problems with nightmares and she is often awake at night, throwing up and trying to ground herself to reality. she even lights something on fire when she has a nightmare in acomaf– but i think these lines are more about her inner conflict and her feeling like she’s causing destruction everywhere she goes, and feeling like she can’t breathe. 

“'Cause they see right through me
They see right through me
They see right through
Can you see right through me?
They see right through
They see right through me
I see right through me”

this is her finally completely opening up about herself to rhys, saying that she has a lot of deeply rooted issues and she knows it’s obvious to everyone around her that she is struggling. this is also her finally admitting that shes not fine. 

“All the king’s horses, all the king’s men
Couldn’t put me together again
‘Cause all of my enemies started out friends
Help me hold onto you”

feyre is reflecting on how broken she was when she was with tamlin, but no one could fix her. not that tamlin reallytried, but his half hearted attempts of giving her new paints, going on with the wedding and generally trying to subdue her didn’t work. this also kind of implies the only person that can fix feyre, is herself. also her now enemy, tamlin, started off as her friend and lover. she doesn’t want this to happen again and is asking for rhys to help her hold on to him<3.

“Who could stay?
You could stay
You could stay
You”

“Combat, I’m ready for combat”

so this has a sweet ending of her realizing that rhys would stay with her and help her work through everything. he wouldn’t treat her like the animal she feels like she is. and the last line is her realizing that she really does want to fight and overcome this. she wants to heal herself, harness her powers, and fight for the new home she has found :)

yay! (also side note i wanna mention: feyre is a fellow sagittarius (born dec 21) so the archer fits even better bc that’s the sag symbol) anyways hope that wasn’t too long and actually made sense. i’m gonna crawl into my hole now. 

this might be long but i thought of it and it has to be done :)

“our secret moments in your crowded room
they’ve got no idea about me and you”

okay so literally in QoS they communicate basically entirely in silence, like they’re the only people in a crowded room, especially at arobynn’s party they are basically flirting without anyone knowing because at the time things are basically all platonic to everyone else. no one knows that they’re growing feelings or having secret conversations. 

“there is an indentation in the shape of you
made your mark on me, a golden tattoo”

this is EoS and KoA energy– the claiming marks, and the tattoos that rowan gives aelin. ALSO the choice of the color golden screams rowaelin because as we know thats the nightgowns color and i feel like it comes up a lot when describing aelin– golden eyes, hair etc.

“all of this silence and patience, pining in anticipation
my hands are shaking from holding back from you
all of this silence and patience, pining and desperately waiting
my hands are shaking from holding back from all this ”

QoS is almost entirely sexual tension so i think this is very self explanatory. they were both holding back the way they felt about each other when they both clearly wanted something more. this gives me vibes of rowan needing to cool down from aelin’s presence and taking forever to fall asleep with her so near yet so far away.  

“say my name and everything just stops
i don’t want you like a best friend”

um please so several points– 1.) rowan is the first person that starts calling celaena by her real name, aelin ( if i remember correctly i don’t think he really ever calls her celeana?? only aelin and she gets mad, but i may be wrong bc it has been a while since i’ve read HoF) he makes her comfortable with her real identity and helped her come to terms with who she was and her name. 2.) fireheart. that’s it. it’s who she was to her family and its who she is now to rowan. ALSO “i don’t want you like a best friend” their relationship goes from basically entirely platonic in HoF to something more in the late books. in QoS, it took them forever to get together bc they had to break through the past definition of their relationship which was strictly friends, carranam, and fighting partners. but they obviously wanted more, and started feeling more comfortable with their past trauma and relationship baggage to face that. 

“only bought this dress so you could take it off
take it off 
carve your name into my bedpost
‘cause I don’t want you like a best friend
only bought this dress so you could take it off”

ALRIGHT HERES THE KICKER. so this is obviously referring to the golden nightgown that rowan requests. i KNOW that he technically doesn’t even take it off her and they don’t go there but she literally only bought it for him bc he said he would love that color. in conclusion it still counts and the sexual tension was there so.

“inescapable, I’m not even gonna try
and if I get burned, at least we were electrified”

SO i feel like they both know that they are inevitable and i think it kinda ties into the idea of the mating bond being something that you can’t break or avoid. they subconsciously knew that being apart would not work. AND we have a reference to aelin’s fire… she might burn too brightly, but at least she burned.

“i’m spilling wine in the bathtub, you kiss my face and we’re both drunk
everyone thinks that they know us, but they know nothing about”

HAHA we have a little reference to aelin bathing rowan and washing his hair in that one scene. tbh this doesn’t really fit that well but it’s not too out of place– i also may not be thinking of anything bc i havent re read them in a while. anyways, we also have another moment where rowan and aelin are kind of keeping what is blooming between them a secret from the rest of aelin’s court.

“flashback when you met me
your buzzcut and my hair bleached”

their haircuts at the beginning of QoS… rowan cut his long ass hair and aelin had to dye her hair red to go undercover and not get caught… WHY DOES IT WORK SO WELL I–

“even in my worst times, you could see the best of me”

in HoF aelin was at the lowest point of her life. even though he was closed off was dealing with his own baggage, he saw the power aelin held. the light that had been snuffed out inside of her. he pushed her because he knew what she was capable of. and i forgot who said this, but rowan was never afraid of aelin the way chaol was. he saw every part of her and loved all of it. 

“flashback to my mistakes
my rebounds, my earthquakes”

rebounds??? *cough cough* CHAOL AND DORIAN *cough* okay but for real these weren’t really mistakes but she had made plenty of other mistakes around that time. he helped set her on a better and clearer path. and i guess we could technically consider chaol a rebound…

“even in my worst lies, you saw the truth of me”

her keeping the mating bond from him? her keeping so many of her plans a secret? her pretending she’s okay and KoA and him seeing right through her? yea <3

“and I woke up just in time
now I wake up by your side”

I think around nehemias death she was kind of in a trance where she felt like nothing mattered and her life was useless (the whole “i do not care” scene where she was lashing out is a good example), but he helped her out of that. she has that one quote that im gonna paraphrase about how he held her hand and walked back into the light with her. He essentially woke her up from the nightmare she was living and now she wakes up next to him. this literally also happens in HoF because he starts letting her sleep in his bed, which was a huge step in the right direction for their relationship. he started seeing her as a friend and he literally falls asleep with his hand over her heart bye. 

“my one and only, my lifeline”

mates are truly each others one and only and i think it’s beautiful that she says “lifeline” because that’s literally what it is to them. they are stronger together and even the forces of their existence are tied together <3

anyways if you read this whole thing thank u lol i just had to get that out:)