#the buffer

[wishcamper]

All in the Family Part III: Feyre the Harbinger

Pre-reqs: Part I | Part II

No content warnings, just some minor Mor slander.

Welcome back to my series on ACOTAR and Family Systems Theory! Today’s topic is how systems react to change, generational patterns, and special considerations in family integration.

When we last left off, we discussed the IC family system that, while dysfunctional, maintained relative balance as long as everyone played their roles in the nuclear family emotional process (NFEP). As a refresher, the NFEP is how anxiety moves through a family: 

Mor feels anxiety about Az's feelings for her, and she passes it off to the boys. Cassian steps in the middle of the conflict at Mor’s unconscious request and takes inappropriate responsibility for Azriel’s feelings of rejection and Mor’s anxiety. Thus Mor doesn’t have to deal with her emotions and Azriel suppresses his feelings once more. Everyone plays their part, and balance is restored until the cycle starts again. 

Now we’re going to talk about how Feyre is a harbinger of change for the IC’s dynamic. Let’s look at the IC pre-Feyre:

So let’s think about how Feyre enters the IC. She and Mor develop a friendship, and Cassian treats her with affection like he does Mor, though without all the touching. Azriel seems to like her well enough. Amren is Amren. And Rhysie boy is OBSESSED with her and will never side with anyone against her. Feyre has power over Mor, Azriel, and Cassian when she becomes High Lady, but she also has power because of her relationship with Rhys, the most powerful person in the family. What will this do to our system?

Mor, girl, you good?

I’ve added some new lines to represent the significant changes once Feyre enters the scene. The big gold blob between Feyre and Rhys is to represent their mating bond, which is canonically a stronger and more important relationship than all others. In this system, it’s the most significant relationship and the alliance that wields the most power. If Feyre and Rhys agree on something, it will be done.

The pink arrow between Feyre and Mor represents what to me is the compensating balance to the system. Mor develops a friendship with Feyre because that’s what keeps everything in harmony. She approaches Feyre with much more interest than we ever see toward Nesta or Elain, even when they're both in the arguably identical position of being romantically involved with her brothers.

And that, to me, is odd. Especially considering how Feyre first enters the system as opposed to her sisters.

Imagine this: your beloved family members returns home after having been held as a prisoner and the first thing he says when he sees you is how he fell in love with some girl. Excuse me???? Putting aside the fact that Rhys trapped his friends in Velaris against their will for the good of the city (arguably the same situation he was in UTM), wouldn’t you be a little put out? No hi hello I love you nice to see you, just she’s my fucking mate? I’m sorry sir but, who??!?!?!?!

Nevertheless, Rhys returns to his family saying he’s met the love of his life, and suddenly this person even before she’s present holds a great deal of power in the system. Rhys’ closest relationship is no longer Mor, it’s Feyre.

Remember that Mor is the most likely source of anxiety in the family. This displacement really unbalances her, I think, removing the moderating presence between her, Cassian and Azriel. So what do we see her do? Throw in hard for Feyre. IMMEDIATELY she tries to get Feyre alone to start establishing a relationship with her new symbolic mommybestie.

We also see her hanging out with the other two boys a lot, together or just Cassian alone. I have to wonder if that was the norm before, or what changed when Rhys was UTM. Now that Rhys is absorbed in Feyre, Mor is using that buffer in earnest. Without Rhys to balance them, she pingpongs between Cassian and Azriel through a lot of ACOMAF, enough so that Feyre, who just met them, notices it on several occasions. 

And this is not to downplay that Mor likes Feyre and they’re genuine friends. I’m more so saying that even if Mor disliked Feyre, it’s not likely she would’ve made that public. She needs her relationship with Rhys to be strong enough to justify her place because of the anxiety she brings to the system. The way to stay chill with Rhys is to stay chill with Feyre. We see that over and over and over.

Thankfully (?), Feyre is more than ready to integrate into the existing system. In fact, she reinforces Rhys’ power and acts as another moderator between everyone. She notices the weird Mor/Cas/Az triangle but has no outward reaction to it, doesn't even bring it up to Mor who is supposedly her friend, which in the sense of the system is accepting and condoning it to continue. She doesn’t question the family rules or interrupt the NFEP. Feyre generally wants everyone to get along all throughout the series. Do we ever see her disagree with anyone besides Rhys? Because I genuinely can’t remember her in an argument with anyone in her family besides him and her sisters.

So in summary:

Feyre temporarily unbalances the system by diverting a huge amount of Rhys’ attention and care.

The system rebalances though Feyre and Mor’s friendship and Feyre’s tacit endorsement of the IC’s rules, the power structure, and the NFEP regarding the buffer triangle.

Feyre's entry reveals the weak points in the system, like the buffer, as well as the HUGE dependence on Rhys as a moderator for everyone else. This sets the stage for the Archeron invasion to take the whole thing down.

Let’s talk a little about family rules before we wrap up.

All families have rules, some spoken and most unspoken. Rules can be things like we always have dinner together, throwing things when you’re mad is not allowed, children have to wear helmets when they ride bikes. They can also be things like don’t tell outsiders our business, do whatever dad says when he’s drunk, don’t show your feelings ever. The IC has some rules I want to highlight, one being: don’t bring home a love interest.

In all the 500 years, why are all these kids still single? We never hear of any long-term relationships of any significance until ACOSF. None of them have partners or lovers worth naming. What the hell? Is the mating bond that sacred, even though it's so rare, that you assume you'll fuck around until you hopefully find it? Personally, I don't believe people work that way. I think we crave companionship and love that we don't get from our families. There's between an 81-86% chance you will be married at some point in your life, and I know America isn't Prythian but it feels against the odds that ALL of them are unpartnered without some other explicit reason why.

The important thing to remember is that all rules have a source point, like those laws that say don’t drive with an alligator in your car or whatever. Someone did this thing once and it was bad, so don’t do it again. Often the source point goes back many many generations, but with the IC I think it’s what happened between Mor and Cassian when they were seventeen. Love in the friends group = bad. So let's never talk about it again, until these three fuckin' humans show up and goddamnit we have to.

And that’s what you missed on Glee!

[tariah23]

Oh…. Well, it’s over for Crunchyroll I guess

[australet789]

Because of recent comments on how some characters are "too buff" this is an appreciating post for @neal-illustrator Zeus' deisgn and how much it inspired mine.

Buff men for the win!

Also please this is not ship art, dont tag it as such or i will block.

[cherrybeez]

old moomin stuff

[juxtp0se]

Bigtop Burger " OVEN " ( 2025 ) v. " DOWN " ( 2022 )

[stareiiez]

Fully masked Invincible is the sweetest variant you've met. Sure, he's killed people, but everyone makes mistakes, and the way he says, ' I'm sorry for every little thing,' is a lot cuter in your books. A true textbook bottom cutie, but he argues he can top for real if given a chance.

he saves you from the civilian casualties that one of the other variants created. he bridal style carries you through the clouds and profusely apologizes when you're shaking in his arms from being too cold and being held so tight in his arms. he even apologizes for not even being your mark grayson, you're not his but he can't help but touch you like you really are his.

when the two of you are settled on the city's outskirts, and safe from the death and screams. he cups your face in his gloved hands, staring at you from his goggles. he's missed you. he's missed the two most important women in his life. he just needs to get his mom now and take all three of you home. his body is ragged and high-strung under the pads of your fingers, and he halfway chokes on a sob when you don't hold any malice in your pretty gaze when you look at him.

he's always been such a tender lover, sweet on the lips and heavenly in the bedroom; a true fallen angel that never chose a side on the day of reckoning in heaven.

the third time he apologizes is for the way he kisses you when he tugs the mask halfway over his nose and smashes your mouths together just because he can't stand the silence between you two. he tastes like desperation and yearning. Perhaps the tiniest bit of sin when his teeth latch on your bottom lip and suck it into his mouth so he can hear you sigh openly.

However, you don't mind. his sorries escalate from his half-chubbed boner rubbing against your hip to saying sorry for how you writhe and tense on soft patchy grass when his thick dick stretches you out in ways that feel like you're being torn in two. He isn't sorry for cumming too quickly, because he makes up for it in his pussy eating skills later on.

[archi-pelago]

i have a really self indulgent timetravel au im not going to write but its sure fun to draw for

[sesamestreep]

speaking of “day of the dove”, it deserves to be famous just for the part where the Klingon captain is talking to Kirk and Spock and his wife who’s just been beamed aboard comes up and starts laying into him and he goes “my wife and science officer” by way of explanation and introduction and it cuts to Kirk and Spock looking at them like this for no real reason

which could mean nothing

[pangur-and-grim]

also, I just got the edits back for the Sir Cameron book, and they're so interesting!! I feel almost ashamed, because they made me realize how blind I am to my own book? like I hope that I would pick up on all these flaws when reading someone else's work. anyways, very happy to have someone smart and knowledgeable picking it apart and giving me the chance to fix things before it goes out to the public. but I did also go into flight or fight mode in my living room out of sheer embarrassment.

[wizard-eater]

wizad spell of queueueueueueueues you

[wishcamper]

All in the Family: ACOTAR PART II

Welcome back to our multi-part lesson on ACOTAR and Family Systems! Today’s topic is family roles, the interplay between them, and their combination’s influence on the nuclear family emotional process in the Inner Circle.

Pre-requisites: Part I

Creds: license and mf master's degree in counseling babyyy. and unhinged enough to write it all down.

No content warnings, just garden variety family dysfunction.

oh my god what the fuck does that mean

Let's back up and start with the structure of the IC pre-Archeron invasion. We have Rhysand, Cassian, Azriel, Morrigan, and Amren in a found family. This is where we have to suspend our disbelief a bit, because you’ll notice there are no parents in this family. However that doesn’t mean no one functions as a parent, because in any system there is a hierarchy, at least in an emotional sense, and the power vacuum will always get filled.

When a parent is missing from a nuclear family, very often one of the children will step in to fill the role and rebalance the system. Older siblings caring for younger ones, female children picking up housework, even phrases like calling someone the “man of the house” confer symbolic authority and responsibility to someone theoretically on the same level as the others. The dark end of this road is emotional incest, when parents rely on a child emotionally in the same way they would a spouse, a dynamic that is deeply inappropriate and incredibly damaging for a child.

Okay, so let’s talk about sibling position to see who is most likely to step up. This is a found family, so obviously none of these are based in biology, but if we look at the core four, they have a pretty clear birth order layout in terms of both power and personality. 

Rhys: A textbook oldest child - responsibility-seeking, serious, tending toward leadership roles. Oldest children often feel the burden of setting a good example for others. Prone to relieving anxiety via control.

Az and Cas: Classic ends of the middle child spectrum (invisible to hyper-visible). Middle children are flexible, adaptable, and competitive, and often struggle with questions identity. They may seek to meet needs for connection and validation in unhealthy ways.

Mor: Baby of the family energy through and through. Youngest children are more likely to be outgoing, creative, and rebellious, and struggle with inferiority and self-centeredness. Interestingly, they’re also more likely to abuse alcohol and are overrepresented in psychiatric populations.

Amren, hilariously, comes across as an only child - they tend to be wise, independent, and private, struggling with social skills and receiving criticism. (1)

So who’s filling our parental roles here in the IC? Who has power over the others? Rhysand is an obvious choice - he regularly makes decisions for the group as well as individual members on the basis of his feelings and his political position. I think you could even argue Rhys sees the people of Velaris as his children, too, though he definitely plays favorites lol. Amren also emerges as a person with power, given everyone is afraid of her and she has influence over Rhys. Amren has some authority over the others, though she is less invested in their personal lives and so functions differently in the system than Daddy Rhys.

So Rhys is one parent, and Amren is like a weird aunt. It’s very normal in systems with a parentified child (PC) that the other children feel resentful - they’re all supposed to be on the same level, and yet one of them has been exalted above the rest. The PC can respond to this so many ways - force, charm, control, bribes, threats, ignoring them - it’ll depend on the person and the individual system. But the PC will also feel that counter-resentment and leverage the power position to create balance in the family (Cassian, Azriel, stop trying to kiss your sisters). The irony is that, in this system, no one asked Rhys to be in power over his friends - he decided he wanted them in his court and blurred those lines himself. I suspect this was intentional, though likely unconscious, because it gives him a nuclear option if he ever needs to reestablish order and control in his family. We see him pull rank in tense personal moments that have literally nothing to do with politics despite his excuse they do.

(I do think, though, that there’s an argument to be made here that, for people in certain positions of prominence and influence, all your choices are political. Your image is part of your power and so, by extension, the parts of your personal life that become public have an effect on your ability to rule. Rhys and Feyre use this rationale with Nesta in ACOSF, though my babe isn’t exactly a Hunter Biden. More of a Claudia Conway, I’d say.)

Let's go back to our scary image from the beginning.

Bowen believed in the importance of visualizing this structure, so he advocates for family mapping or construction of a genogram (2). Given what we’ve unpacked so far, we can roughly plot the individual connections and hierachy. I’ve created this one to show the basics of the relationships and power structure in the IC, and we’ll get more specific from here.

Solid lines=connectedness

Dashed lines=conflict

Arrow=direction of energy

Squiggles=ambivalence/fluctuation

Line thickness=emotional closeness

Amren’s special line to Rhys=whatever ulterior motive she has

If you remember from my last post, one of the most important forces in a family is the triangle. Take another look at the triangles above, and see which ones seem unstable to you. The one that immediately stands out to me, even just visually, is the Cas/Az/Mor triangle. Each individual relationship has a different tenor, which creates a lot of instability. You can see how Mor needs that closeness with Cas to balance the tension with Az, but in order to keep their relationship stable, Cas and Az have Rhys as a moderating presence. Because what is the one thing they all have in common? A close relationship with Rhys. And Rhys has Amren to reinforce his power and responsibility, keeping the whole system in balance.

In this way, the IC’s system, while dysfunctional, is relatively stable pre-Archerons.

To understand how that’s possible, we have to talk about anxiety. Anxiety is the main energy that moves conflict through the family and sets off the nuclear family emotional process (NFEP). Anxiety must go somewhere. In enmeshed systems like this one (members’ emotions and security are highly dependent on one another), members relieve their anxiety through the system instead of resolving it individually or in dyads. In cut off, emotionally distant systems, anxiety gets internalized or displaced outside the family.

Given the sheer variety of relationships in the system, the most likely source of anxiety is Morrigan. She has a different relationship to every person in the system. She’s in the middle of the power hierarchy between the “parents” and the “kids”, and floats around inside the relatively stable triangle of the bat boys, with individual connections to each one . She also has a pattern of internal conflict that she moderates externally via alcohol and relationships. Despite not having the most power externally, Mor’s actions and reactions often cause the rest of the system to shuffle around her, giving her a great deal of power.

But don’t just take my word for it - let’s look at this in action.

Say Mor, Cas, and Az go out together bc apparently that is something they do regularly. Mor feels Azriel getting too close, which triggers her anxiety because she does not want to talk about whatever is between them. In response, she communicates her displeasure by leveraging the triangle and focusing her intimate attention on Cassian. But this creates conflict for Cassian, who wants to moderate Mor’s anxiety without rupturing his relationship with Azriel. Hence, we get the weird overfamiliar platonic besties routine, threading the needling of giving Mor the protection she’s asking for without out-and-out antagonizing his brother. Azriel buries his hurt feelings and retracts emotionally, despite wanting to be connected, and they go back to how they were.

So we can see how Mor has generated the anxiety, and it follows down the chain: she passes it off to the boys, who deal with it through emotional cutoff (Az) and enmeshment (Cas). Cassian steps in between the conflict at Mor’s unconscious request and takes inappropriate responsibility for Azriel’s feelings of rejection and Mor’s anxiety, while Az puts his feelings away and reestablishes emotional distance. This is the NFEP in action.

And yet Cassian and Azriel are still shown to be close, so where do these feelings go? I mean, they do physically fight each other all the time lol. Azriel banks a lot of repressed resentment he has to discharge elsewhere. Cassian feels the burden of peacemaking and internalizes the unresolved conflict as his own fault, doubling down on his commitment to making it better. Mor avoids contending with her own feelings because everyone else is doing it for her.

And here’s where Rhys becomes a moderating presence for all of them. Rhys has ultimate decision-making power over who is in and who’s out of the family, and sets the rules of engagement. He decides who gets respect, who’s allowed to initiate conflict. Rhys hold’s the power in the bat boys triangle, the strongest alliance in the system, incentivizing Cas and Az to get along with each other. He also incentivizes Mor/Cas/Az to keep their shit together because Amren has influence over him, and they need their alliance to leverage power against her. Rhys doesn’t have a problem with the buffer, so they rest of them “don’t” either.

The best question to ask when it comes to dysfunction is this: who benefits? We can see this in larger systems, too: who benefits for housing disparity, patriarchy, systemic racism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia? People in power. If a system is balanced via dysfunction, it’s because whoever is in power wants it that way. With families, this is often more unconscious - perhaps Rhys is just as afraid of family disintegration as Mor, and believes addressing their issues will cause them to split. Perhaps there is a more generational pattern at play. I think it’s worth considering not just how this family functions, but what conscious and unconscious choices are being made given their individual families of origin.

And then the Archeron’s come, and all these cracks will be exposed and the system will get blown to shit. See you next time, class dismissed!

Sources: 

Eckstein, D., & Kaufman, J. A. (2012). The role of birth order in personality: An enduring intellectual legacy of Alfred Adler. The Journal of Individual Psychology, 68(1), 60–61.

Brown, J. (1999). Bowen family systems theory and practice: Illustration and critique. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 20(2), 94-103.

Genogram made with Canva, art by @artworks_by_rokii, rosalynnart on deviant art, @sallteas

[nosilbi]

my fav siblings <3

[wohyunz]

[clouvu]

Cooking up an older Clervie outfit design so I don't have to keep drawing her looking like her child self but Long

[eggbem]

Portal!RotTMNT #2: Mikey

Donnie

Yep, I haven't forgotten about this series!

I tell you, the mental block I had while finishing this piece was unreal. I think it was because I had to completely rethink the background and the angle and figure out the second portal.

But shout-out to @caffinatedcastiel for reigniting my commitment to getting this one finished; shout-out to @duckcrumbs for recommending Caff's Portal!RotTMNT fic; shout-out to @soepwashere for re-inspiring me with the Portal Duo post; and HUGE shout-out to my sister, who kept me accountable. Y'all motivated me to get this one done! And because of this picture, I'm way more confident in backgrounds and perspectives and rendering.

Now for Raph and Leo!

[velnna]