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One of my closest friends @freyjas-musings surprised me with this GORGEOUS Elucien birthday gift today! Thank you so much @freyjas-musings for this beautiful gift. I’m so thankful that we met all those years ago and became friends. You’ve been one of the few people to help keep me sane in this crazy fandom! I love you bunches 🩷🩷 thank you for all your love and support 🩷🩷

And thank you so much @brielyasmin for creating this beautiful artwork. Elain and Lucien look STUNNING 🥹🥹 your artwork always blows me away with its beauty!!

Characters belong to Sarah J Maas

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I say this as a Gale hater, but the Gale hate is so forced 💀

Like you’ll see a hundred young Snow thirst edits and then one video with Gale on screen for a second and the comments are like “⚠️ CONTENT WARNING: Gale”

Gale isn’t an evil character, he just has a different world view than Katniss. This series is full of characters with complex moral compasses yet only Gale seems to get hate. He may be problematic but none of the characters are saints like have a little nuance.

I would love to know how many of today’s Gale haters were one of the MANY people who said they were team Gale back when the first movie came out just cuz Liam Hemsworth was hot. Some people just can’t help but jump on the bandwagon 💀💀💀

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“Rediscover the Hunger Games as an adult” they said.

Yeah maybe don't do that.

The burden of fully understanding this series has emotionally wrecked me. I will never be normal again. I will never recover. And I will never stop reading them 😭😭😭

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No but the Hunger Games really said "what do you hate more- the atrocities or the people who commit them against you? Because like it or not there IS a difference. If you hate the people who commit acts of pure evil more than you hate the acts themselves, what will stop you from becoming just like your enemies in your pursuit of justice? What will keep you from commiting those very same acts against THEM when the opportunity arises? And what then? The cycle of pain and suffering will never stop. Round and round it'll go. Nothing will ever change. But. BUT. If you hate the atrocities. If you hate the vile, senseless acts MORE than you hate the people who did them to you. If you are able to see that evil is evil regardless of who does it... The cycle ends with you. No, you may never get justice. But you will never be responsible for making others, even your enemies, suffer the same crimes you have. The atrocities will never be committed by you, never by your hand. And that's the way you change the world. It's the ONLY way" and that's why I am sure it will never stop being one of the most relevant works of fiction ever created

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I appreciate that Suzzane Collins always humanizes the tributes in the arena, even the Careers that are often the “villains”.

That scene where Silka is all alone, finds the tree Haymitch and Wellie are in, and just sits there and cries. That moment of solidarity when Haymitch drops the chocolate down to her. That reminder that they are all just kids who are either brainwashed or forced to be violent.

The other tributes are never the real enemy.

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The Careers are a metaphor for the Capitol and the Newcomers are a metaphor for the revolution

The Capitol scrubbed any mention or evidence of the Newcomer alliance because it would have sent the message to the districts that the weak are stronger together.

Wyatt says that the Careers always have good odds but these Games are different because of the alliances. Normally, the Careers have better odds not just because of their strength and training, but because of their alliance. The Careers are always outnumbered by the rest of the tributes but they stick together and they make plans. They are organized. The other tributes biggest weakness isn’t really that they are physically weaker or less trained, it’s that they are often on their own and fighting each other as well as the Careers.

Throughout the book, the oppressed are mentioned to outnumber those in power multiple times: the Newcomers to the Careers, District 12 to the peacekeepers, the tributes in the the training compound to the peacekeepers, and (obviously) the districts to the Capitol.

The tributes from 6 say no to the alliance at first because they don’t want to be targeted by the Careers. This seems so irrational because of how the Games work. The Careers would still try to kill then eventually so why not join the Newcomers to have better odds? But this is exactly what keeps people in the districts from rebelling: fear of retaliation from the Captiol. People know how brutally rebels and their loved ones are punished. But is avoiding being targeted actually better in the end if the Capitol is still in power?

Plutarch asks Haymitch why they submit to the peacekeepers and the Capitol. And when Haymitch says they don’t want to end up dead he responds:

“And yet, I still don’t think the fear they inspire justifies this arrangement we’ve all entered into. Do you?”

The Newcomers are the districts after they unite during the revolution. They find their strength through binding together against a common enemy. The Capitol had purposefully pitted the districts against each other because they knew if they stop fighting each other, they might finally unite and overthrow them.

They edit the 50th Hunger Games to make it look like Haymitch was a selfish jerk who played the Games alone and drove his only ally away in the end. The Games with the biggest tribute alliance ever was completely erased and replaced with a story of a victor who only looked out for himself.

The Capitol wants to push the narrative that it’s every man for themselves. Even the Careers will turn on each other eventually because there can only be one victor. They push individualism because it keeps people weak and under control. Unity will always be the most powerful advantage.

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I LOVE it when artists depict a very clear dynamic between lovers, so much so that I could literally ship that couple without even knowing them. I hope I’ve managed to draw enough of the kind of dynamic I envision for Elucien. It’s not the full scope of what I imagine them to be like, but certainly a chunk of it!

And also… I heard that the people who voice Elain and Lucien both ship Elucien. If that’s true, I‘m gonna scream. You know how the voice actor of Zuko made a fan audio in which Zuko confesses his love for Katara? I need something like this for Elucien 😭

Gwynriel WIP. I might have to change some poses and rearrange them all. It’s just not as good as the Elucien piece and it’s bugging me.

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I’ve seen so many people gather so much evidence and plead their case for why either elriel or elucien/gwynriel is endgame. And don’t get me wrong, I like reading them but there’s literally only one piece of evidence that is needed to convince me.

Elain and Azriel already like each other… and their stories haven’t started. I can’t see how they would be endgame. What’s their story? What’s their arch if they already want to be together?

If they were endgame, Elain would probably be with Lucien already and her book would be about her realizing that she wants Azriel instead. Deciding that she wants to choose for herself and not accept the bond would be her arch.

But that’s not the case so I feel like the only logical story going forward would Elain and Azriel ending up with other people they aren’t already half way through a love story with. The whole appeal of romance is watching two people develop feelings so I don’t really see much appeal in an elriel book.

Obviously there’s lots of other evidence that makes me believe in elucien and gwynriel but I feel like this is the one piece of logic that just can’t be disputed for me.

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can I be so real with you. can I be honest. totally aside from the moral panic about women on booktok being """porn addicts""" because they're reading erotica, I think it's so fucking goofy when people act as if there needs to be some kind of societal reckoning with how tiktok books "aren't very good." like, okay? they're commercial products mass produced for entertainment. tiktok didn't invent that; you're going to have to take it up with pulp magazines and dime novels and comic books. you guys would throw up if you found out about Fanny Hill.

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The Booktok Debate

This pro-booktok vs anti-booktok debate has been going on for a while now but I’ve definitely seen a spike lately probably because of the release of Onyx Storm and I kinda just wanted to rant about it and just shout to the void because it really pisses me off.

I swear if people had media literacy, this whole debate could finally cease to exist because we would actually be able to just think critically about the books in question and there would be no need to argue about them.

I feel like people have been throwing around the term “media literacy” a lot on TikTok but I genuinely agree that so many people either don’t have it or subconsciously don’t use it. Perhaps this is because people don’t want to analyze media they don’t like or admit it has value or meaning. Or on the other side, people don’t want to acknowledge criticism or accept flaws within a piece of media they love. Either way, our emotions cause us to avoid thinking critically about media or attempting to enter healthy discussions with people with opposing opinions.

How this pertains to the booktok debate…

People should be allowed to read books that are objectively not well written but are fun to read without being considered unintelligent. However, they should be able to analyze and recognize the quality of writing they are consuming and hopefully be aware of how their consumption affects them and things outside of them.

There is a lot of valid criticism about how Booktok has negatively impacted the publishing industry and book marketing and has caused a huge push for more smut. So many books seem like copycats of each other or a Frankenstein-esque amalgamation of popular tropes, plots, characters, etc. We should be able to acknowledge these problems, even if we love Booktok and read those books.

There are definitely a lot of people on Booktok who have a very “I’m just a girl�� mentality and just want to “turn off their brain” when reading. 90% of the reason I read is for escapism/entertainment, so I somewhat understand this, but I do fear that this can be a harmful approach to reading (and most things). We can both read just for fun and have a break from reality but also be able to understand what we are reading and form thoughts and opinions on it.

But on the other side of the debate, I think that labeling a book as “bad” is not very intellectual, and all media, no matter how “bad”, can and does have value and can be discussed or analyzed on a deeper level. While I do believe that certain books are objectively not as high quality as others, reading is still subjective, and therefore, saying that all the fans of Acotar or Fourth Wing are dumb for liking them is just condescending. And don't even get me started on that whole "literature vs. books" discourse that was happening earlier this month on TikTok because that was some elitist bullshit.

I love Acotar and Fourth Wing and many other “dumb” Booktok books. But I also know they aren’t the best books ever written, and I recognize their shortcomings. I am aware that they are nowhere near the level of writing as the classics, but I can still think they are good for what they are, and I shouldn’t have to justify liking them. I also agree with people claiming that a lot of the criticism seems pretty misogynistic because we do not scrutinize popular media that has male-dominated audiences nearly as much as these books. At least from my perspective.

Also side-note: there are so many aspects to writing a novel. There’s the prose, writing style, dialogue, world-building, character arcs, pacing, etc. I hate when people criticizing Booktok forget about the aspect of crafting a compelling and interesting plot that keeps people’s attention. There are so many incredible works of literature that are critically acclaimed but are so boring. There is value and skill in writing a book that people can’t put down and adore for having a fun plot. I hate that people try to discredit authors like SJM for being bad writers. She may not have the most beautiful prose and unique themes but she can write a fun book that keeps people’s attention. That is talent and that is valuable.

If we could actually analyze literature like we are supposed to be able to, the anti-booktok people should be able to realize the value of Booktok books despite their opinions and the pro-booktok people would be able to see and acknowledge the issues with those books and the platform and then we could all stop bickering because there’s not much to actually fight about. Like can we just give it a rest already?

There’s so much more to this that I could talk about but if you read all that, thanks for listening to my rant, I’m getting off my soapbox… for now :)

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Why I’m excited for Elain’s book:

Elain is still incredibly traumatized from the cauldron, she’s just better at hiding it from everyone which is why nobody has done an ‘intervention’ for her (I saw someone say Elain used gardening gloves before becoming fae and suggested her lack of using them now is a form of self-harm). I think her book is going to be a similar level of beautiful to Nesta’s along the lines of healing from this trauma.

Elain genuinely HATES what she is still. I don’t think she’s accepted being fae yet. I think her book is going to be a journey of acceptance and learning to love yourself again in the wake of trauma. This has the potential to be one of the most relatable stories.

I’m so excited for her to leave the NC. In ACOSF Sarah mentioned Elain in NC black as being washed out which foreshadows her belonging elsewhere. I have seen so many ideas that she leaves and travels with Lucien on his emissary duties allowing her to see the world (let my girl see the tulips) and she heals on this journey away from the stifling NC and all the babying the IC does to her. On this journey she also finds where she truly belongs which ends up being a diff court from her sisters signifying her growth as a woman independent from her sisters.

Overall: I think Elain’s book is going to be a beautiful story of healing, acceptance, finding where you belong, and remembering how to love yourself again. I think her book is going to be a tear-jerker and I’m so excited. I will be placing an order of tissues with my order of the book.

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Live. Laugh. Love. Lucien Vanserra

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I think we need to take acotar less seriously

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🤗

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I just wanted to say my love for elucien has transpired all odds because I literally went into reading acotar shipping elriel.

I genuinely thought elriel was endgame and that the series was finished before starting it. I saw like two elriel fanarts and never questioned it because I never saw anything about elucien. And when they started interacting in the books I was obsessed, I loved them.

So imagine my surprise at the end of acomaf when Lucien says Elain is his mate. I actually kinda hated it at first because I had already set my mind on elriel and I continued to ship them for a while.

But all those little moments between Elucien in acowar had me questioning. It wasn’t really until I finished all the books and reread some parts and reflected before I realized I actually shipped elucien more than elriel. And now I’m a die hard elucien shipper. I was converted LOL.

Elain and Lucien aren’t even together yet but they just are that couple. My elriel ass didn’t stand a chance against Lucien Vanserra 💀💀💀

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“We need more cold complex female characters” y’all couldn’t even handle nestha archeron

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Sometimes I feel out of place in the acotar fandom because I actually like all the characters…

I hate this nests vs. rhys debate. I’m tired of people hating on cassian for simply being having a relationship with both characters and never picking the “right side”. Characters are allowed to be complex. Why are y’all so black and white?

Yes, Nesta was a bitch but she was also grieving and traumatized. She needed help and now she’s trying to be better.

Yes, Rhysand was a dick but he was also trying to protect his family. He made mistakes out of fear and anger and he realized this.

Yes, Cassian is mated to Nesta but he has been best friends with Rhys for centuries and he’s his High Lord. He can defend and support Nesta but also respect and agree with Rhys without picking sides. Yes, you should support your partner first but he’s shouldn’t have to agree with everything she does or says especially if it’s wrong or disrespects someone he considers his brother.

And no, their actions shouldn’t be excused but y’all literally call them evil for doing things that are morally gray and leave no room for nuance.

And don’t even get me started on the elriel vs. elucien/gwynriel ship wars like stop harassing each other. Ship who you want and leave people alone. Why are you going out of your way to hate on people of the opposing ship? You aren’t going to convince them to switch sides, especially if you’re insulting them. Mind your business.

I love having deeper discussions about characters’ actions and stuff like that but it should never be a method to hate on other people and their opinions. And it’s fine to dislike characters but if you hate the main characters to the point that you are demonizing them then why are you here?

This is literally a book series about faeries like ITS NOT THAT FUCKING DEEP