#LMAO I'M SORRY BUT I GOTTA BE SAFE WITH THESE FUCKING TAGS YALL

[byanyan]

mkay i wrote two more good chunks (bringing us up to exactly 4k fucking words...........) of byan's bio but i'm just starting to touch on the actual lowest, darkest point of their life and it's not really helping the already shit place i'm in mentally, so. think i'm done for the night lmao

[spidersmiceandeverythingnice]

Wait, what Nessian hike scene? I quit reading after acomaf…

Oh God so this is going to be long but it makes zero sense without the bonkers context: in the Nessian book (book 4, Court of Silver Flames) there is this bass ackwards subplot invented to make sure Feyre can't solve the plot - SJM says, "Oh, Feyre - the 22 year old who learned to read last year - is pregnant by her 530 year old husband and so she can't fight!! 🥰💕🥰😌😌 Isn't this lovely?"

Except - and I am not joking this is all explained in EXCRUICIATING DETAIL - Feyre and Rhysand were having sex while Feyre was shape-shifting into an Illyrian and now the baby has wings. Apparently shape-shifting changes your entire DNA. And Illyrian women have pelvic bones shaped to carry winged babies but High Fae dont. Because Feyre and Rhys had wings while they banged, the baby has wings. And this is VERY DANGEROUS. So dangerous that Feyre cannot use any of her powers - cant shift back to the appropriate bone structure for the baby. The pregnancy could rip Feyre apart from the inside. They CANNOT do a c-section - they are extremely firm and insistent on this. Feyre is absolutely going to die if she continues the pregnancy to full term. The birth will be SUPER DANGEROUS.

And Rhysand just decides that Feyre doesn't need to worry her pretty little head about this information. He tells the details to every single person in the Inner Circle because he is just so SO worried about his darling Feyre...

But yeah she definitely doesn't need to know medical information about her pregnancy so that she can make informed desicions and choices of her own!! Who needs to make choices of your own free will when you have Rhysand amiright!?!?

Anyway Rhys and the whole Inner Circle have been treating Nesta like absolute scum and garbage because she has PTSD and isn't grieving in a nice, pretty way like Feyre or Elain. Nesta is self medicating with casual sex and copious amounts of booze and doesn't want to spend time with people who hate her (ie, the Inner Circle) so they get super salty and decide to tear down the apartment where Nesta is living, force her to move to the House of Wind with Cassian, who at this point has nothing positive to say abut Nesta except that she looks hot when she's starving herself, and order her to train as a warrior even tho Nesta has repeatedly expressed that she has zero interest in fighting as a soldier. They explain that she's EMBARRASSING to the Night Court and Feyre exclaims, "How can I have any right to rule if I can't control my own sister?"

Yeah.

So anyway Nesta is pissed as fuck about this after several hundred pages of MacGuffin Hunting and decides that it's wrong for Rhysand to be such a manipulative fucking control freak about their lives so she tells Feyre (correctly) that Rhysand doesn't really respect her because if he respected her, he'd tell her how dangerous her pregnancy really is.

Now we get to the hiking scene. Brace yourself because it's about to be gnarly as fuck:

So Nesta has spilled the beans. Feyre gets very sad and starts to cry like a little girl - which, for all intents and purposes, she is because SJM chose this book to make Feyre weirdly "pure" and innocent and a beacon of goodness and light. Weird choice given that Feyre is canonically willing to murder literally anyone who gets in the way of what she wants for her future, but whatever.

Seeing her sister cry makes Nesta extremely upset and triggers her to start having an absolute breakdown. The book so far has been full of passages describing Nesta's feelings of worthlessness, her lack of self-esteem, and the way she desperately needs to control some aspect of her life (drinking, having as much sex as possible with complete strangers, having rituals to lock her door and take baths because these things are insanely triggering for her) because all of her choices and autonomy are constantly being stripped from her. She fears now that Feyre will hate her, because she was angry when she revealed the truth - so Feyre won't hear the truth, but will hear Nesta's fury, and at last, her little sister will hate her for good. Their relationship may now be ruined.

However, instead of Feyre and Nesta having a heart to heart a la ACOTAR and instead of them collecting Elain and fucking off from the Night Court for good - Feyre runs crying to Rhysand, who gets so incredibly fucking angry with Nesta for... revealing the fact that he lied to his wife about her own pregnancy.

Rhysand orders Cassian to get Nesta out of Velaris, "Or I'll fucking kill her."

Actual line. From the text.

Now, idk if you've guessed by now, but Cassian is actually Nesta's love interest for this book! Spoiler alert, but they turn out to be mates!!! So what is Cassian, the most alpha of all the very alpha very sexy Bat Boys, going to do when some random ass guy who is smaller than him threatens his mate?

Nothing.

Actually, I lied - Cassian obeys Rhysand unquestioningly. Zero instincts with regards to protecting his mate, whom he is supposed to be falling in love with, whom he is supposed to respect. He takes Nesta out of the city and thinks about how fucking angry he is with her, how mean and awful and cruel she is for... telling Feyre - again, correctly!!!!! - that Rhysand doesn't respect her as an equal and that her pregnancy is dangerous. He decides that he's going to punish Nesta by forcing her to hike across the mountains! He and Rhysand have a good little mental chuckle about this. Haha, Nesta hates hiking and being in nature, she'll be so miserable, but she totally deserves this for being a nasty evil person who we dislike. :)

During this conversation when Cassian decides to physically punish Nesta for acting out, also, it's revealed that Feyre is TOTALLY fine with the fact that Rhysand kept details about pregnancy secret from her. It totally doesn't matter that he lied to her and removed her agency and her ability to make informed decisions about her own life and body. He always has good intentions and just overreacted out of his overwhelming love for her, and who is Tamlin, again? What was the issue with him supposed to be? Anyway, I forget! Who cares!? Feysand baby is a go, they're going to name him Nyx <3

Cassian and Nesta are now hiking. Nesta is neither eating nor drinking, even though they are literally marching up and down multiple mountain peaks. For days, Cassian does not speak to Nesta except to bark orders at her about where to stop for the night, and to wake her up in the morning. Nesta rapidly spirals, thinking about how she's in pain and how much she deserves this, since she's a hateful person who has ruined every relationship she's ever had, so it's fine if she dies.

Cassian thinks, "Huh, Nesta's awfully quiet. Weird. She's probably preparing to yell at me again, she's such a bitch."

But then he notices how little she's eating, and how hard she's pushing herself despite her being much physically weaker than him, and he wonders if she's trying to kill herself.

He doesn't react to this insight, and continues marching her across the mountains until Nesta quite literally passes out from exhaustion.

Cassian is now somewhat worried - he's still angry at her, though, and yells at her that she should have been drinking more water.

Soulmates, everybody!

Anyway, once Nesta is revived, they have a heart-to-heart... sort of. Nesta tells him how worthless she feels, and how she genuinely believes she deserves what is happening to her. She thinks that she deserves cruelty, and is completely un-loveable, because she couldn't forgive her father for neglecting them as children and he still went out to die for them. Cassian... replies that he once burned down a village because that was where his mom was from and his mom was mistreated. No reaction to any of Nesta's insecurities. He doesn't reassure her, or tell her that he loves her no matter what, or that her pain doesn't define her worth as a person. He tells her that the best time to be a nice person was yesterday, and the second best time is today. Then he gives her a sword and tells her to start her training up. They have sex by a lake.

Ta-da! Nesta is now cured of her PTSD.

That's the hiking chapter! And while I'm at it -

At the end of the book, Cassian has never once admitted to liking Nesta as a person on the page - oh, he loves having crazy sex with her and her huge boobs, but he still kinda thinks she's an unreasonable bitch - and Nesta has gotten on her knees to apologize to the Inner Circle for being inconvenient and mean to them. Nobody ever apologies for calling Nesta worthless, or telling her she ought to be thrown into a dungeon in the Court of Nightmares, or for tearing down her house, or chasing her out of Velaris. Nesta sacrifices her vaguely defined powers to save the Feysand baby. And they all live happily ever after.

I rarely call out authors directly but I hope this long ass post explains my very deep and special personal hatred for SJM. She wrote a "healing arc" for Nesta which involved her being physically beaten into submission and molded into a "nicer" person for the Inner Circle's convenience. I have never read anything more fucking disgusting than Court of Silver Flames.

Tldr: You quit while you were head anon, and I'm proud of you.