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acourtofstarsanddreamers2 · 5 months ago

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I feel like so many people need to remember this stuff from Silver Flames

“After the war, I was in a bad place. I still am, I suppose, but for more than a year after the war …I did a lot of things I regret. Hurt people I regret harming. And I hurt myself. I drank day and night and I …I took strangers to my bed. To punish myself, to drown myself.”

“You’ve probably guessed that my residency in the House, my training, my work in the library is my sister’s attempt to help me.” Her sister whom she had still not apologized to, whom she still didn’t have the courage to face. “And I … I think I might be glad Feyre did this for me. The drinking, the males—I don’t miss any of it. But the music … that I miss.”

None of the inner circle, or readers, are upset that Nesta simply drank, spent money, or had sex.

No one is slut shaming Nesta. None of the inner circle are just disgusting that she’s drinking a lot or having sex or partying. Because, guess what? the entire inner circle did that for years. And we as readers know that. They like to drink and party. They’ve had sex plenty of times with plenty of different people.

But inner circle weren’t drinking all day, every single day, for months to hurt themself. Nesta was.

The inner circle weren’t sleeping around to numb the pain and trauma they experienced. Nesta was.

The inner circle also recognize the trauma that comes from after a war and the guilt that they’ve felt before and they’re recognizing it in nesta.

Rhys and Feyre aren’t just mad that nesta is spending their money. Rhys canonically is super rich, pays his people very well, and doesn’t tax the people of his court. He also gives nesta lots of gifts and pays for an extravagant mating ceremony at the end of silver flames. So no money is not the problem.

None of those thing are the problem.

The problem/the reason the inner circle were so upset or worried about nesta is the fact that they could see she was in a bad place mentally. She lost a ton of weight, they could see that. She went from never having slept with a man to sleeping around a bunch. She went from never drinking to drinking 24/7. She stopped speaking to cassian, the male she was willing to die with rather than leave him to die alone and save herself. She stopped speaking to Elaine and Feyre. She and Amren stopped being friends. She was living far away in a not-so-great apartment. None of this is normal nor good for nesta.

They all recognized this.

“It was the King of Hybern’s fault. She knew that. But it was hers, too. Just as it was her fault that Elain had been captured by the Cauldron after Nesta spied on it with that scrying, her fault that Hybern had done such terrible things to hunt her and her sister down like a deer.”

Nesta is in such a state of guilt after the war. She is blaming and punishing herself for everything that’s happened.

“Some days, the sheer dread and panic locked Nesta’s body up so thoroughly that nothing could get her to breathe. Nothing could stop the awful power from beginning to rise, rise, rise in her. Nothing beyond the music at those taverns, the card games with strangers, the endless bottles of wine, and the sex that made her feel nothing—but offered a moment of release amid the roaring inside her.”

It’s okay to remember and recognize that Nesta herself claimed the drinking, the gambling, and the sex were used to both punish herself and stop the pain she felt. She was not some party girl. She wasn’t living her best life. We the readers can see that, and the inner circle can see that.

“He’d never understood, though, why Nesta insisted on dwelling here. He got why she wouldn’t take up rooms in the House of Wind—it was too far from the city, and she couldn’t fly or winnow in. Which meant dealing with the ten thousand steps up and down. But why live in this dump, when the town house was sitting empty? Since construction had finished on Feyre and Rhys’s sprawling home on the river, the town house had been left open to any of their friends who needed or wanted it. He knew for a fact that Feyre had offered Nesta a room there—and had been rejected.”

“Cassian knew there’d been previous conversations—fights—about Nesta. About whether to give her time to heal herself, as they’d all believed would happen at first, or to step in. But as Feyre wept at the table, he knew it was a breaking of some sort. An acceptance of a hope failed.”

“We need to make some changes, Nesta,” Feyre said hoarsely. “You do—and we do.”

Feyre not putting the blame on Nesta and recognizing they both have things they need to change.

“I’ll take the blame,” Feyre went on, “for allowing things to get this far, and this bad. After the war with Hybern, with everything else that was going on, it … You … I should have been there to help you, but I wasn’t, and I am ready to admit that this is partially my fault.”

Accepting she played a part in letting nesta get so bad and not putting all the blame on nesta. But also recognizing what nesta was going through.

“Keep your self-righteous do-gooder nonsense out of my life.”

“You don’t have a life,” Feyre retorted. “And I’m not going to sit by for another moment and watch you destroy yourself.” She put a tattooed hand on her heart, like it meant something. “I decided after the war to give you time, but it seems that was wrong. I was wrong.”

“ A pointed glance at Nesta’s gray dress, baggier on her than it had once been. Did Nesta notice the faint glimmer of worry in Amren’s smoky eyes—understand how rare it was?

More than that, did Nesta understand that this meeting wasn’t to condemn her, but instead came from a place of concern?”

“One,” Amren said, raising a slender finger, “you can move up to the House of Wind, train with Cassian in the mornings, and work in the library in the afternoons. You will not be a prisoner. But there will be no one to fly or winnow you down to the city. If you want to venture into the city proper, by all means, go ahead. That is, if you can brave the ten thousand steps down from the House.” Amren’s eyes glittered with the challenge. “And if you can somehow find two coppers to rub together to buy yourself a drink. But if you follow this plan, we will reevaluate where and how you live in a few months.”

“And my other option?” Nesta spat.

“You go back to the human lands.”

I can never understand why people hate Feyre for her actions in silver flames. Nesta had been doing all of this for MONTHS. They all thought Nesta would take a while for herself, get some space and time, and eventually get better. So they gave her that time and space.

Time and space that Feyre herself was NEVER given after the events under the mountain. Feyre was not allowed time to heal herself. She was not allowed to deny or say no to Tamlin. She had to ask if she could do things, simple things, and was still told no. That’s why these fights between feyre and Rhys occurred. Because Feyre knew what it was like to not have that. So, she gave Nesta that. But after months and months of nesta getting WORSE, she accepted that it was time to step in and help her. Which nesta herself recognized and eventually appreaciated.

But even feyre owned up to her mistakes. She felt bad for allowing Nesta to get this bad even if it had been Nestas decisions.

Nesta was also given the choice of if she got help or not. Once again, something feyre was not. Feyre was locked inside a house and left, leading to her having a panic attack and wrapping herself in magic. Nesta was giving the choice of 1.) she can either leave velaris and go back to the human lands and be cut off from their money (which they have every right to do) or 2.) Go live in a place where she cannot access taverns or alcohol. Work. Train. And get better. (Which she chose. Which helped her. Which she appreciated.)

I feel like people cannot understand that just because Nesta was angry/upset at the inner circle for doing this at first, or because she wanted to be ‘left alone’ , that does not mean the inner circle is wrong for what they did.

Of course nesta was mad. Of course she was upset that she was being cut off. She was angry at everything and everyone including herself. She was hurting herself. Punishing herself.

“They could’ve done it nicer.” I mean this so genuinely, Nesta would not have responded or reacted good to ‘nice’ either. Nesta does not like feeling vulnerable or less than. She does not like feeling like someone has the upper hand. Regardless of how the inner circle went about it, she was going to be mad.

The options were either let her be angry or let her continue to hurt herself. Simple as that.

Regardless of what you think the inner circles intentions were. Feyre, Elaine, Cassian, and Amren all cared about Nesta and all wanted her to get better. They were worried about her.

I love Nesta, but loving nesta doesn’t mean you have to downplay everything she went through or did. Loving her doesn’t mean you have to excuse all the bad she did. Loving her doesn’t mean you have to hate the inner circle and re-write their actions or intentions. Loving her doesn’t mean excusing what she’s done. It doesn’t mean that everyone she was angry at was actually the bad guy. It doesn’t mean that feyre or the IC locked her up. It doesn’t mean she was a prisoner.

Now, obviously, I can’t tell you how to feel or which characters to love or hate, or which characters actions to like or not. You’re entitled to your opinions. These are my opinions.

But pleaseeeee, at least pay attention to what the books are saying and what these characters are saying and feelings. It gets so frustrating seeing people miss the entire points of these books or what these characters do or say.

Seeing people talk about how the inner circle drinks more than nesta, when the problem was never just nesta drinking.

Seeing people talk about how feyre hated that tamlin taxed his people, but didn’t care that rhy had a lot of money and got ‘mad’ at nesta for spending their money, when the problem was never nesta spending money.

Seeing people say Feyre being locked up by Tamlin and Nesta having to go live in the house of wind are the same, when they absolutely are not.

If your love for a character clouds your opinion and bias so much that you blatantly ignore what every character says, does, or thinks, including the character you love, then you need to reread the books without the rose colored glasses.

Pls no hate this is just my opinion, if you don’t agree, that’s fine. We don’t have to agree.

I love nesta. This is NOT an anti nesta post. I love her and her book and her development. Don’t get it twisted !!

Okay byeeee

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