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@gryzelleennar
If some people are ready to forgive Tamlin everything that he did to Feyre and his people because he helped Feyre in the Hybern camp and took a part in bringing Rhysand back to life...
Then those people must forgive everything to Feyre and Rhysand because she stopped the world from being destroyed when she recreated the Cauldron while he gave his life so that Feyre was able to save their world.
Feyre and Elain do no wrong, I don't care. They are flawless and perfect, and I will be defending them blindly from here on out. If Nesta stans can do it, so can I 🤷🏻♀️
🎨 : buriedbloom
Blonde closer to canon, but her brown-gray (?) hair fits her so much better and gives me feelings like with them it's real canon 😩🤌
Without AI
Does Feyre look down on housework?
or
Who was responsible for running the Archeron household?
You’ve all seen claims like:
«Nesta did all the housework/ cooked/ cleaned/ mended/ did the laundry» or «Feyre is misogynistic, so she doesn’t respect «women’s» work and therefore never mentions it».
If you haven’t seen these — I’m glad for you. Good job, you need to take care of your eyes and minds. If you have — welcome. Here’s our plan:
Identify what these beliefs are based on.
Try to debunk them or at least simplify them.
Provide examples that prove the opposite point of view, namely: «Feyre was involved in household chores».
Part One
You can claim anything you like. But if you want to back up a claim, you need some evidence. So what are the pillars these views rest on?
«Feyre was too busy hunting, so she didn’t have time for household chores.»
«Feyre says in ACOMAF that she can’t cook.»
«Feyre started hunting at fourteen, but they moved into the cottage when she was eleven. Someone had to cook for them during that time. And that someone was Nesta, because in ACOFAS Elain is only just learning to cook.»
«Feyre is misogynistic, which makes her an unreliable narrator, so she doesn’t respect «women’s» work and therefore doesn’t mention it.»
Did I miss something? Of course. But let’s take a look at what was missed by those who love to make such claims.
Part Two
1) «Feyre was too busy hunting, so she didn’t have time for household chores.»
I absolutely love this claim: at first glance it seems perfectly logical — while one person brings in food outside the home, the others take care of the house itself. What would «household chores» mean for the Archerons? Cooking, cleaning, sewing, chopping wood, fetching water, doing the laundry. It looks like a kind of division: one works outside for the family, the other inside for the family. Idyllic.
But let’s look deeper. Chapter 2 of ACOTAR. Feyre comes home. A dialogue between her and Nesta:
«Can you make a pot of hot water and add wood to the fire?» […] «I thought you were going to chop wood today.»
«I hate chopping wood. I always get splinters.» […] «Besides, Feyre,» […] «you’re so much better at it! It takes you half the time it takes me. Your hands are suited for it — they’re already so rough.»
(As you can see, I’ve left only the characters’ lines: no narration, no Feyre’s inner thoughts — so no one can say this is her bias. We’re using only what the characters themselves said.)
So what’s the situation? Feyre came back and did part of her work. But the dialogue highlights several things:
Feyre is better at chopping wood;
Nesta doesn’t want to chop wood;
they actually have a rotation for this task.
From here — a few counter-questions:
How can anyone claim Feyre didn’t do housework because she was too busy hunting, when we are literally told she chopped wood?
If they had a rotation for that chore, why couldn’t they have a similar rotation for other chores — cleaning, fetching water, laundry?
If Nesta feels free to tell her sister — the one who has already fulfilled her share of responsibilities (brought in food and the chance to earn money), and let’s not argue that Feyre’s work was the hardest both physically and emotionally — that she should also do household chores simply because Nesta doesn’t like them… then tell me, what would have stopped Nesta from making the same demands about other chores?
And let me be clear: I do remember that Nesta eventually chopped wood. I’m not trying to say Nesta did nothing around the house. I’m only pointing out that Feyre also did household chores.
2) «Feyre says in ACOMAF that she can’t cook.»
I adore this claim too — especially because of how quickly Feyre becomes a «reliable narrator» for the very same people who spend the rest of the time insisting she’s unreliable. (We’re not even talking about the moments when she praises someone they like — in those moments, she’s also soo «reliable.»)
But all right, what’s actually going on here? Chapter 55 of ACOMAF:
I avoided his stare, turning for the kitchen. «You must be hungry. I’ll heat something up.»
Rhys straightened. «You’d — make me food?»
«Heat,» I said. «I can’t cook.»
First, what’s the context? Feyre spent her entire life in the mortal lands. If she cooked at all, she cooked the kind of food humans ate, prepared in the human way. But food in the lands of the Fae tastes different:
«If you ever come to Prythian, you will discover why your food tastes so different.» (Rhysand, ACOMAF, Chapter 24)
And Feyre says she «can’t cook» to the man she loves, the man who matters to her. A man who, not only because of his race (High Fae), but also because of his upbringing and station, is used to refined cuisine. Naturally, the cooking knowledge of a girl from a family that couldn’t even afford spices:
«From a block away, the scent of hot food wafted by — spices that tugged on the edge of my memory, beckoning. Elain let out a low moan behind me. Spices, salt, sugar — rare commodities for most of our village, impossible for us to afford.» (Feyre, ACOTAR, Chapter 3)
— would hardly allow her to prepare anything impressive for someone accustomed to exquisite food, especially when that someone was so important to her.
Second, Feyre often downplays her own skills. Feyre tells Tamlin she isn’t good at painting:
«You like — art? You like to paint?»
«Yes. I’m not — not any good, but if it’s not too much trouble... I’ll paint outside, so I don’t make a mess, but —» (ACOTAR, Chapter 16)
But then here are Cassian’s words about her paintings:
«Cassian’s High Lady had a way of capturing the world that always made him pause. Her paintings sometimes unsettled him. The truths she portrayed weren’t always pleasant ones. He’d gone to her studio a few times to watch her paint. Surprisingly, she had let him. The first time he’d visited, he’d found Feyre tense at her easel. She was painting what he realized was an emaciated rib cage, so thin he could count most of the bones. When he spotted a familiar birthmark on the too-thin left arm beside it, he eyed the same mark amid the tattoo on her own extended arm, brush in hand. He merely nodded to her, an acknowledgment that he understood. He had never been as thin as Feyre during his own years of poverty, but he understood the hunger in each brushstroke. The desperation. The hollow, empty feeling that felt like those grays and blues and pale, sickly white. The despair of the black pit behind that torso and arm. Death, hovering close like a crow awaiting carrion. He’d thought about that painting a great deal in the days afterward — how it had made him feel, how close they’d all come to losing their High Lady before they’d ever met her.» (ACOSF, Chapter 3)
And let me be clear: I am not claiming Feyre was a great cook. Not at all. They had no food, no teacher, no means to learn properly. I’m only pointing out that using this situation as if it were definitive proof — is illogical.
3) «Feyre started hunting at fourteen, but they moved into the cottage when she was eleven. Someone had to cook for them during that time. And that someone was Nesta, because in ACOFAS Elain is only just learning to cook.»
Well, this could have been a strong argument — because you can’t one hundred percent disprove it… But you also can’t one hundred percent prove it either. We have no direct confirmation.
Someone might reasonably point out that certain things are meant to be understood not from context but from subtext — what the author layers between the lines. And I could agree with that: it’s possible Maas intended for Nesta to be the one who cooked, and it wasn’t explicitly mentioned simply because the books focus on Feyre. I might have agreed — if we didn’t already have a book about Nesta.
But we do have a book about Nesta — a book centered entirely on her: her past, her thoughts, her feelings, her motivations, her emotions. We learn a great deal about Nesta. We learn that she wasn’t just her mother’s favorite, but also a victim of her mother’s attention and upbringing. That part isn’t revealed in the original trilogy, but it is part of her story — an important part that explains so much, and therefore it’s given space in her own book.
So here’s the logical question: if cooking, done exclusively by Nesta, was part of the subtext all along, then why, in a 700+ page book created to explore Nesta, is there not a single mention of her cooking in the cottage? I’m not even asking for whole chapters — just a single line. Not even necessarily from Nesta herself, but perhaps from Elain. Yet there’s nothing.
We do get a mention of letters — one short passage:
«Nesta had written letter after letter when they’d fallen into poverty, begging her cousin Urstin to take them in. They’d gone unanswered, and then the money for postage had run out. Nesta still wondered if their cousin had ever learned what had become of the relatives she’d ignored and left to die.» (ACOSF, Chapter 25)
Or a mention about water, which she and Elain had to share:
«After that, Nesta had been lucky to bathe once a week, thanks to the hassle of heating and hauling so much water to the lone tub in a corner of their bedroom. Sometimes, she and Elain had even shared the same bathwater, drawing straws for who went in second.» (ACOSF, Chapter 43)
But not a single word about cooking as part of her past? Maybe it’s simplest to accept that Nesta didn’t cook. Or, if we want to keep everyone happy, let’s phrase it this way: Nesta wasn’t the only one who cooked. If there was any cooking happening in the Archeron cottage at all — because frankly, it seems to me they (three single children) most likely just bought food that didn’t require much preparation:
«When the ships sank, the creditors circled him like wolves. They ripped him apart until there was nothing left of him but a broken name and a few gold pieces to purchase that cottage. I was eleven. My father... he just stopped trying after that.»
«That’s when you started hunting?»
«No; even though we moved to the cottage, it took almost three years for the money to entirely run out,» […] «I started hunting when I was fourteen.» (ACOTAR, Chapter 18)
We also have this line:
«I spied on hunters when I could get away with it, and then practiced until I hit something. When I missed, we didn’t eat. So learning how to aim was the first thing I figured out.» (ACOTAR, Chapter 12)
And we also know that Feyre was the one who worked with the meat:
«Will it take you long to clean it?» Me. Not her, not the others. I’d never once seen their hands sticky with blood and fur. I’d only learned to prepare and harvest my kills thanks to the instruction of others.
[...]
«We can eat half the meat this week,» I said, shifting my gaze to the doe. The deer took up the entirety of the rickety table that served as our dining area, workspace, and kitchen. «We can dry the other half,» I went on, knowing that no matter how nicely I phrased it, I’d still do the bulk of it. «And I’ll go to the market tomorrow to see how much I can get for the hides,» I finished, more to myself than to them. No one bothered to confirm they’d heard me, anyway.
4) «Feyre is misogynistic, which makes her an unreliable narrator. That’s why she doesn’t respect «women’s» work and doesn’t mention it.»
I’m not going to waste time listing all the moments when Feyre admires feminine beauty, the beauty of dresses; how thrilled she is at what she feels for Mor (finally understanding what it’s like to have a female friend — and for the love of Goddess, don’t you dare say that’s a sign of misogyny. This child grew up in a household where she was neglected, with a sister who constantly belittled her. Of course Feyre had awful self-esteem, doubts about her own worth, and survival skills instead of friendship skills); or how Feyre is inspired by Azriel’s story when they learned to fly, about two female warriors and their courage.
No. I’d rather draw your attention to this moment:
«I can work — help around the kitchen or in the gardens — to pay for it.» (ACOTAR, Chapter 16)
If, as so many people love to claim, Feyre is misogynistic and doesn’t respect «women’s work,» then why is the very first thing she offers to do in exchange for payment working in the kitchen or the garden? The supposedly «misogynistic» Feyre — who, they say, only ever did the «male» part of the work and had no respect for the «female» part — why does she immediately offer Tamlin labor in precisely those «female-coded» areas? She doesn’t propose herself for any «male» role — which would have made sense if she truly were misogynistic, if she had spent her whole life doing only the «male» side of the chores and didn’t know how to do the «female» ones. Strange, then, that this Feyre offers to work in the kitchen or the garden…
Part Three
Now let me give some examples of moments when Feyre is, in one way or another, connected to household work:
Her brown eyes — my father’s eyes — remained pinned on the doe. «Will it take you long to clean it?» Me. Not her, not the others. I’d never once seen their hands sticky with blood and fur. (ACOTAR, Chapter 2)
«I thought you were going to chop wood today.» […] «Besides, Feyre,» she said with a pout, «you’re so much better at it! It takes you half the time it takes me. Your hands are suited for it — they’re already so rough.» (ACOTAR, Chapter 3)
«Do it outside,» I whispered, my voice trembling. «Not… here.» Not where my family would have to wash away my blood and gore. (ACOTAR, Chapter 4)
I can work — help around the kitchen or in the gardens — to pay for it. (ACOTAR, Chapter 16)
The finished product was chilling enough that I had to set aside the painting in the back of the room and go try to persuade Alis to let me help with the Fire Night food preparations in the kitchen. Anything to avoid going into the garden, where the Attor might appear. (ACOTAR, Chapter 20)
I made the bed, fixed breakfast, washed the dishes, and then stood in the center of the main living space. (ACOMAF, Chapter 52)
Nuala was already preparing lunch at the worktable; there was no sign of her twin, Cerridwen, but I waved her off as she made to take my dishes. «I can wash them,» I said by way of greeting. (ACOFAS, Chapter 1)
Conclusion
The goal of this post was not to prove that Nesta did nothing while Feyre did everything. No. The goal is to show that the claims «Feyre never did housework, Nesta did it all» are false.
To say — no, to insist — that all the work was done by Nesta (or by Nesta and Elain), while Feyre did nothing, means ignoring the passages that prove the opposite.
Subtext is great. But don’t ignore the actual lines in the books and the context of the situations.
I love Nesta but some of you Nests stans do too much
Did you just call me a Nesta's stan?
Rhysand wasn't even invented by the author, but that still didn't stop him from finding Feyre 😩💞
Feyre-Elain's moments that make me sob
Rereading changed my view on Elain so much. I'm so grateful to her for these sisterhood moments 😩💞
It still hadn’t stopped me from buying her seeds for the flower garden she tended in the milder months, whenever I could afford it.
And it hadn’t stopped her from buying me three small tins of paint — red, yellow, and blue — during that same summer I’d had enough to buy the ash arrow.
— ACOTAR, Chapter 2
«Feyre, you should have told us!» Elain said, still gaping. «Oh, how awful — and you had to endure losing her all on your own, you poor thing.»
— ACOTAR, Chapter 27
«Come inside. We’ll show you the house! We don’t have a room decorated for you, because we thought you’d be with poor old Aunt Ripleigh for months yet, but we have so many bedrooms that you can sleep in a different one each night if you wish!»
— ACOTAR, Chapter 27
Instead I spent most of my time with Elain in her little garden. I was content to listen to her talk about every bud and bloom, about her plans to start another garden by the greenhouse, perhaps a vegetable garden, if she could learn enough about it over the next few months.
She had come alive here, and her joy was infectious. There wasn’t a servant or gardener who didn’t smile at her, and even the brusque head cook found excuses to bring her plates of cookies and tarts at various points in the day. I marveled at it, actually — that those years of poverty hadn’t stripped away that light from Elain. Perhaps buried it a bit, but she was generous, loving, and kind — a woman I found myself proud to know, to call sister.
— ACOTAR, Chapter 29
I gazed again at that sad, dark house — the place that had been a prison. Elain had said she missed it, and I wondered what she saw when she looked at the cottage. If she beheld not a prison but a shelter — a shelter from a world that had possessed so little good, but she tried to find it anyway, even if it had seemed foolish and useless to me.
She had looked at the cottage with hope; I had looked at it with nothing but hatred. And I knew which one of us had been stronger.
— ACOTAR, Chapter 29
My father murmured his praises to Elain, who beamed at him and rested her head on his shoulder. And I was happy for them — for the comfort and ease of their lifestyle, for the contentment on both my father’s and my sister’s faces. Yes, they had their small sorrows, but both of them seemed so… relaxed.
— ACOTAR, Chapter 30
But I tried to smile, if only for Elain, who flitted about the room, personally greeting each guest and dancing with all their important sons.
— ACOTAR, Chapter 31
I wrapped my arms around her. «Be on your guard. All of you.»
She nodded, tears in her eyes. «I would have liked to see the continent with you, Feyre.»
I smiled at my sister, memorizing her lovely face, and wiped her tears away. «Maybe someday,» I said. Another promise that I’d be lucky to keep.
— ACOTAR, Chapter 31
Something in my chest broke at Elain’s voice from the hall behind her.
At the sweetness and youth and kindness, untouched by Prythian, unaware of what I’d done, become —
I backed away a step. I couldn’t do this. Couldn’t bring this upon them.
Then Elain’s face appeared over Mrs. Laurent’s round shoulder.
Beautiful — she’d always been the most beautiful of us. Soft and lovely, like a summer dawn.
Elain was exactly as I’d remembered her, the way I’d made myself remember her in those dungeons, when I told myself that if I failed, if Amarantha crossed the wall, she’d be next. The way she’d be next if the King of Hybern shattered the wall, if I didn’t get the Book of Breathings.
— ACOMAF, Chapter 23
Elain lifted her teacup. «Whatever the reason, Feyre, we are happy to see you. Alive.»
— ACOMAF, Chapter 23
She put a hand on Nesta’s knee, the purple of my sister’s gown nearly swallowing up the ivory hand. «Feyre gave and gave — for years. Let us now help her. Help… others.»
— ACOMAF, Chapter 23
«Please,» I begged the king, who motioned Elain to be shoved into the water. «Please, I will do anything, I will give you anything.»
— ACOMAF, Chapter 65
Swift revenge helped no one and nothing but my own, roiling rage.
Even if every time I spoke to them, I heard Elain’s sobbing as she was forced into the Cauldron.
— ACOWAR, Chapter 1
Ianthe lifted her head, scanning my unsure, if not a bit aloof, face. «So you could be with them forever. And if Lucien had discovered that Elain was his mate beforehand, it would have been… devastating to realize he’d only have a few decades.»
The sound of Elain’s name on her lips sent a snarl rumbling up my throat.
— ACOWAR, Chapter 1
I cut in, «If Elain is not up for it, then she won’t see him. I won’t force the meeting on her. But he does wish to see her, Nesta. I’ll ask on his behalf, but the decision will be hers.»
— ACOWAR, Chapter 15
Elain had always been gentle and sweet — and I had considered it a different sort of strength. A better strength. To look at the hardness of the world and choose, over and over, to love, to be kind. She had been always so full of light.
— ACOWAR, Chapter 15
I said, watching the space where my friends had vanished from the town house, «I need you to understand, Elain, that if this goes badly… if he tries to harm you, or any of us…»
«I know. You will defend your own.»
«I will defend you.»
— ACOWAR, Chapter 49
I stood. Met Azriel’s wrathful stare.
«I’m going with you,» I said.
Azriel only nodded.
«You’ll never get far enough into the camp,» Cassian warned.
«I’m going to walk right in.»
— ACOWAR, Chapter 64
Before I could turn back, Elain threw her arms around me. I did not remember when I began to cry as I felt those slender arms hold me, tight as steel.
I did not remember the healer who patched me up, or how Rhys bathed me. How I told him what happened with Jurian, and Tamlin, Nesta hovering around Elain as Helion came to remove her chains, cursing the king’s handiwork, even as he admired its quality.
But I did remember lying down on the bearskin rug once it was done. How I felt Elain’s slim body settle next to mine and curl into my side, careful not to touch the bandaged wound in my shoulder. I had not realized how cold I was until her warmth seeped into me.
— ACOWAR, Chapter 65
I quietly asked the nearest camp-mother to dig up some platters of food for my sisters. Elain was likely starving, and I doubted Nesta had eaten anything during the hours we’d been gone.
— ACOWAR, Chapter 66
Elain faced me. «Do we help her?»
I fiddled with the end of my braid. «Yes — but not today. Not tomorrow.» I loosed a breath. «When — when she’s ready.» When we were ready, too.
Elain nodded, smiling up at me, and it was tentative joy — and life that shone in her eyes. A promise of the future, gleaming and sweet.
— ACOWAR, Chapter 80
«I would like to build a garden,» she declared. «After all of this… I think the world needs more gardens.»
My throat was too tight to immediately reply, so I just kissed my sister’s cheek before I said, «Yes — I think it does.»
— ACOWAR, Chapter 80
Elain met me halfway to the kitchen, bearing a tray of jam tarts toward the table in the dining room. Where an assortment of baked goods had already begun to take form, tiered cakes and iced cookies. Sugar-frosted buns and caramel-drizzled fruit pies. «Those look pretty,» I told her by way of greeting, nodding toward the heart-shaped cookies on her tray. All of it looked pretty.
Elain smiled, her braid swishing with each step toward the growing mound of food. «They taste as good as they look.» She set down the tray and wiped her flour-coated hands on the apron she wore over her dusty-pink gown. Even in the middle of winter, she was a bloom of color and sunshine.
She handed me one of the tarts, sugar sparkling. I bit in without hesitation and let out a hum of pleasure. Elain beamed.
— ACOFAS, Chapter 17
«I asked Nuala to do it in that order,» Elain said as the others gathered round. «Because you’re the foundation, the one who lifts us. You always have been.»
— ACOFAS, Chapter 19
Feyre said, «It is Elain’s choice, Nesta.»
Nesta whirled on her, ignoring the warning flicker of primal wrath in Rhys’s stare. «Keep out of this,» she hissed at her youngest sister. «I have no doubt you put these thoughts in her head, probably encouraging her to throw herself into harm’s way —»
Elain cut in sharply, «I am not a child to be fought over.»
Nesta’s pulse pounded throughout her body. «Do you not remember the war? What we encountered? Do you not remember the Cauldron kidnapping you, bringing you into the heart of Hybern’s camp?»
«I do,» Elain said coldly. «And I remember Feyre rescuing me.»
— ACOSF, Chapter 21
Only thinking this since Feyre doesn’t have silver eyes
Feyre doesn't have silver eyes, but she has shapeshifting abilities, which can make her eyes change:
And if I could grow claws and wings… I could change my eyes, too.
I’d hunted at dusk often enough to see how animal eyes worked, how they glowed.
Cool command had my own eyes widening, shifting — a temporary blindness as I winnowed between trees again, running down a wide branch and winnowing through the air for the next—
— ACOMAF, Chapter 49
Your Bio says love for Feyre like it’s a Feyre blog yet…both your pfp and backround pictures are Nesta and one with Nesta having Illyrian wings.
Could you please clarify where (or maybe «how») you saw Nesta in those art?
High Queen and High King are coming home y'all....
✦ artsjadee
wait... this gives me an idea...
High Queen Feyre. But Rhys is still High Lord. He's like "nah I'm good. I don't need a promotion. But everyone bow to my wife."
✨️ High Queen and High King Consort ✨️
SJM about Tamlin
Honestly, I love this tattoo joke so much. It would explain why some people are the first to scream that: «We shouldn't trust her words!»
Like, she promised that she will pay for this laser removal and didn't actually pay them, so now they don't trust her 🥺
Ans actually, we didn't have the single chapter from Tamlin's pov, so she's actually the only one who knows what thoughts he has. And if she has this reaction to Tamlin — I can imagine what she actually knows about him
"the volume that Maas wrote just to explore Nesta's character, makes the suffering of characters from previous books look less important and less strong. And I hate it."
That's what made acosf such a bittersweet book for me. When I reread the acotar series all the way through, it hit me just how little we truly got to learn about Feyre because of how chaotic her arc was. Her story followed the sequence of: Hunting and killing Fae wolf> taking care of family > kidnapped and taken to Prythian > survival mode at the SC > the entirety of UTM > dying and rebirth > domestic abuse > taken to the NC > doing side quests for Rhys and crew > mate! > more side quests > battle > back at the SC> WAR > story done!
Feyre never got a break nor anytime to have a solo journey that allows us to get more insight into everything that made her who she is. We know she was abused by her mom but how did that abuse look? What were her interactions with her sisters? How did little Feyre cope with loneliness? I can write a thesis about Nesta's character but am still trying to piece together things about Feyre and she's my favorite! Then you have people smugly claiming that Nesta is the most interesting sister when really, she's just the one SJM chose to do a full fledged character-centric story while sacrificing the plot. It was risky but it paid off.
Feyre gets written off as a shallow character who's only depth comes from her experience with abuse at the hands of Tamlin and her pregnancy story (this being new as of the CHD interview). And her experience with her family has been completely dismissed now. Sure, there are still readers out there who don't buy into the way the author tried to rewrite certain moments in acosf (like Nesta claiming Tamlin wanted to take her instead) but overall, so much of what we learned somewhat diminished Feyre's pov in the process because of how much light it shed. There's an older interview SJM did for the acosf promotions where she's like "Feyre didn't know everything" regarding Nesta and I'm like ma'am you wrote her as the neglected youngest sibling of course she wouldn't know!
This is long winded, I'm sorry. I just get really passionate about SJM's treatment of Feyre because I blame her fully for why she's not as strongly embraced by the fandom. Even now, there's such a stark difference in the way she talks about her other fmcs compared to Feyre.
YES
My giant yes to all of it. I really thank you for these thoughts because I feel like my friends are tired of listening to my crуіng about Feyre and her story.
Feyre got me from the moment she said she couldn't read. I didn't like her at the beginning, but she somehow caught me and then made me love her.
It really was something different from all I had read. Heroines always were «not like others» — they loved to read, and in the knowledge gained from books lay the powers that always helped them win against all odds.
And I have nothing against them. Some of my loves are that type of fmc. I just say that with that Feyre was special for me. She was a girl who couldn't do this. She had no teachers, no family, no powers. Only her and her perspective. And she was still smart, still kind.
And because of it, her story and character development could be much deeper. She grew up in a family that insulted her. She believed that she was unworthy and incapable of anything. She was really tired of her life. Her child's mind suffеrеd because of this hunting — to take the lives of innocent little animals.
To understand what it's like, look at any puppy, imagine that you are fourteen and you must kill it because you literally need food. And you will eat that puppy. And this continued for years.
And then that Fae takes her. Someone whom she must literally hате. Her whole life she was taught to hате them. You are with two males who are stronger than you. They have a history of having your race as sІаvеs. They eat from golden plates while people in your land are sтаrvіng.
From this point, the story could reveal a lot of deep and hard thoughts and feelings. A lot. But instead of all the possible volume of тrаumатіzed memories and reflections about what happens in her life, we got these sentences about «his strong-as-stone muscles».
Get me right — I love romantic and erotic plotlines, but here all this traumatic past of Feyre looks like it was written just to create a background for the main character and then move on to the falling in love with this hot High Lord.
Her paints and thoughts were a good moment. But again, it looked like an added reason to show the connecting between Tamlin and Feyre.
And if we recall Maas's plan — to make readers fall in love with Tamlin first, and then move to Rhysand — we can understand why this book evokes these feelings.
Feelings like that were not a story about a woman and her path, but a story about the world, and we just looked at that story through her eyes. We see how beautiful all this Fae is. Those Courts. This High Lord.
She literally went through her dеатh. And all we got was one paragraph at the end of ACOTAR and one chapter in the meeting with the Bone Carver.
Or her magic. It's fantasy. She is literally an avatar. Some elements are the opposite of others, and all of it is within her. How does she feel about it? What is the connection between magic and her personality? How does she understand it? What has it changed in her understanding of herself?
Come on, part of the genre is fantasy. Where is this fantasy?
Or the Ouroboros. I have a post about it. The mirror that literally shows your true self. And what did we get? Crumbles.
Or father's dеатh? Or how he was bеатеn and she, as child, stayed and begged them to stop?
I feel this emptiness in how Feyre's character was revealed before ACOSF. After that, I felt robbed
P.S.
I have giant hopes that my theory about Feyre being Wyrd (Urd) is true. That would explain the first-person narration, why she got all this magic and was able to feel the Cauldron before she even saw it, or why she was able to recreate it. Or why she is an artist — and art being a universal language that could be connected to the language of the universe. Or why, of all other Maas's fmcs, Feyre had the lowest beginning. Or why she got this title Lady of Many Faces. Or why all other fmcs saw her and got the same magic as she did.
But it's only theory. Right now, what we have in hand — it's very sad
Feyre's panic attacks in A Court of Mist and Fury
I'm glad that she confirmed that, because I'm literally annoyed at how people bring up, «Tamlin had panic attacks, that's why he blew up with magic!»
Feyre also had trauma and confirmed panic attacks. She went through her literal dеатh and transformation. She lost her humanity and got all this magic. I would forever have more empathy for Feyre than for any other character in this damn series.
Hot take:
I would be happy to read the main trilogy again in the rewritten version.
All her journey in mental health helped her make Nesta's path and her character more emotionally detailed. I still don't love her, but the level of description of Nesta's suffering and feelings, the volume that Maas wrote just to explore Nesta's character, makes the suffering of characters from previous books look less important and less strong. And I hate it.
I need now, when she has a deeper understanding of feelings, to write about the events from previous books.
But maybe we could see that in Elain's book?
Nesta was so centered on her own thoughts that we didn't see a single understanding of her sisters from her eyes. Like, Feyre gives us this about her sister:
«It meant a lot to her, too.» Hazel eyes narrowed slightly. But I casually watched the river. «Nesta is different from most people,» I explained. «She comes across as rigid and vicious, but I think it’s a wall. A shield — like the ones Rhys has in his mind.»
«Against what?»
«Feeling. I think Nesta feels everything — sees too much; sees and feels it all. And she burns with it. Keeping that wall up helps from being overwhelmed, from caring too greatly.»
«She barely seems to care about anyone other than Elain.»
I met his stare, scanning that handsome, tan face. «She will never be like Mor,» I said. «She will never love freely and gift it to everyone who crosses her path. But the few she does care for… I think Nesta would shred the world apart for them. Shred herself apart for them. She and I have our… issues. But Elain…» My mouth quirked to the side. «She will never forget, Cassian, that you offered to defend Elain. Defend her people. As long as she lives, she will remember that kindness.»》
And this:
I gazed again at that sad, dark house — the place that had been a prison. Elain had said she missed it, and I wondered what she saw when she looked at the cottage. If she beheld not a prison but a shelter — a shelter from a world that had possessed so little good, but she tried to find it anyway, even if it had seemed foolish and useless to me.
She had looked at the cottage with hope; I had looked at it with nothing but hatred. And I knew which one of us had been stronger.
Or this:
Instead I spent most of my time with Elain in her little garden. I was content to listen to her talk about every bud and bloom, about her plans to start another garden by the greenhouse, perhaps a vegetable garden, if she could learn enough about it over the next few months. She had come alive here, and her joy was infectious. There wasn’t a servant or gardener who didn’t smile at her, and even the brusque head cook found excuses to bring her plates of cookies and tarts at various points in the day. I marveled at it, actually — that those years of poverty hadn’t stripped away that light from Elain. Perhaps buried it a bit, but she was generous, loving, and kind — a woman I found myself proud to know, to call sister.
I needed at least something like that from Nesta. Another view on her sisters' personalities, to understand how she sees them. But I got nothing.
So maybe Elain could give it? She has no problem bonding with Feyre and admitting what Feyre did to them or how talented and protective Nesta is.
So maybe with Elain, we would see that sisterly bond, understanding, and love?
«The best person ever» according to author's words
I love this line: «Even though they still basically are the center of everything».
After Crescent City, when another fmc that again meets Feyre and they both have a connection in their magic — starlight and the conduit title, just like Aelin meets Feyre and they both have fire and water.
And the ending of Crescent City, when the statue of Urd (Wyrd from Throne of Glass) looks like Feyre with the Cauldron.
And before that line in HOSAB, that Urd has so many forms. And Feyre the one who has the title Lady of Many Faces...
Are they really the center of everything?
Meaning of Feyre's name — blacksmith?
«Feyre,» Amarantha said, testing my name, the taste of the two syllables on her tongue. «An old name — from our earlier dialects.»
— ACOTAR, Chapter 35
Feyre ≈ Fevre ?
(or Le Fevre/Lefevre) is of Old French origin, meaning «blacksmith» or «metalworker».
Feyre with the Cauldron:
Light danced along the fissures where the broken thirds had come together. There — there I would need to forge. To weld. To bind.
— ACOWAR, 76
Feyre as Starborn and hints that we have
Starborn Magic
Again, the dark paused. I sent my own veils of night brushing up against it, running star-flecked hands down it.
— ACOMAF, Chapter 38
But I folded myself into smoke and starlight, and winnowed from the edge of my branch and into the tree across from me.
— ACOMAF, Chapter 49
Warm and white light, like the sun — like a star.
[...]
Shining — I was shining bright and pure as a star.
— ACOMAF, Chapter 55
And when it again shone as brilliantly as adamant, my release cascaded through me, leaving my skin glowing like a newborn star in its wake.
— ACOWAR, Chapter 15
Bryce and Feyre's connection
Bryce
Starlight poured out of her, and his lightning skittered over her spine, ecstasy in its wake.
[...]
Release crashed into her, out of her, her starlight flaring, and the room was blindingly bright.
— HOFAS, Chapter 85
Feyre
I think the light pouring out of me might have been starlight, or maybe my own vision fractured as release barreled into me again and Rhys found his, gasping my name over and over as he spilled himself in me.
— ACOMAF, Chapter 55
Bryce
Rigelus inclined his head. «It’s a beacon to the world from which the Fae originally came. It sometimes glows when nearest the Fae who have undiluted bloodlines from that world. Prince Cormac, for example.»
«It glowed for Hunt,» Bryce shot back.
«It also glows for those who you choose as your loyal companions. Knights.»
— HOSAB, Chapter 77
Feyre
I released the damper on the power that I had unleashed in Hybern, my body turning incandescent as light shone through. Pure as day, pure as starlight.
I let my glow spread, until it, too, rippled from Lucien’s bowed form.
A knight before his queen.
— ACOWAR, Chapter 4
Just so badass moment with Starlight as a leash for the God of Death and Living Nightmare
And I sent a roaring order down that two-pronged bond that now linked me to the Carver and Bryaxis, reminding them, my teeth gritted, that our soldiers were not fair game. Only Hybern and its allies.
Both raged against the order, yanking at the leash.
I rallied every scrap of night and starlight and snarled at them to obey.
I could have sworn an otherworldly, ungodly sense of self grumbled about it in response.
But they listened. And did not turn on our soldiers who at last intercepted Hybern’s lines.
— ACOWAR, Chapter 70
Starborn Symbol
Of the column of my spine, now inked from my base to my nape with four phases of the moon. And a small star in the middle of them.
— ACOWAR, Chapter 72
Starborn Line
Seline — Starborn Theia's daughter, High Lord of the Night Court mate:
Yet when my first son was born, when the babe screamed and the sound was full of night, I brought him to the Prison and keyed the wards into his blood.
— HOFAS, Chapter 21
Rhysand — Seline's descendant:
«No. The Prison is law unto itself; the island may be even an eighth court. But it falls under my jurisdiction, and my blood is keyed to the gates.»
— ACOMAF, Chapter 18
Feyre:
The Bone Carver’s cell door swung open the moment I laid my palm to it.
— ACOWAR, Chapter 22
huge pet peeve of mine (and i see this on tiktok mostly) is when people use violet (fourth wing) or feyre (acotar) as examples of the type of fmc that talks about how small and petite and not like other girls they are because ITS DEAD WRONG.
violet talks about it because she’s literally fucking disabled and it makes her whole life super super hard
and feyre talks about her size because SHES STARVING. she’s malnourished and miserable.
the shitty type is the ones who actually are like flexing how tiny they are, not the ones complaining that they don’t want to be but certain circumstances force them to be. and it fucks up their lives.
i’ll defend my girls forever
My giant YES to all of it!!! And that's what pissed me off how people forget that they were both happy to finally get muscles
