#there's so many problems and issues that can be said abt the relationships in acotar

[flat-neines]

Ok, I gotta elaborate on this.

As a fellow arospec person on this hellsite, I think that both Tamlin and Nesta being different gradients of aroace could be more compelling than the trash fire that's acosf and Tamlin getting a LI.

Acotar as a series is thematically supposed to be about love conquering all but fails to deliver on that theme on so many levels and different angles that you can't actually tell what you're supposed to be reading. (I've already made posts about how the series fails bc it wants to have its cake and eat it too. now isn't the time for that convo tho) And it's a damn shame that the series that insists on "make love not war" sucks at delivering the different forms and kinds of love that people can have and actively celebrate it. Like. This is a romantasy. It should be the bare minimum. (But alas)

On nesta:

So nesta being ace is kinda obvious to me because she, at her core, craves being seen and cared for who she is and not what she can do for others. It's probably one of the reasons why she reads romance novels most often in particular (instead of "I Am Totally Repressed And Horny And Can Only Think About How Horny I Am" bs) because seeing the heroines being saved or loved by the ML no matter how "difficult" they are is an escape from the reality she lived as a human and currently as a fae.

Her mother and grandmother groomed her to marry well for the reputation of the family her whole life and when that got torpedoed when they fell into poverty, she believed that being married off to Tomas Mandray and becoming his wife would ease her sister's burdens. There is no excitement like elain had for grayson. There's not even any sensuality or desire that could be pointed to. Marriage (and now mating) and all the things it entailed was expected of nesta. It was her job.

Also one of the few times that we see nesta express her dreams for the future, she says that she wants to travel the world and make a name for herself. There isn't any mention of settling down. Or falling in love. I'm not really sure if it immediately occurred to her.

Nesta, when not dealing with her poor mental health, often just seems very :/ about her own sexuality and is deeply uncomfortable with people wanting her to be hypersexual. You can attribute it a lot to her being a modest person (and her history with sa), but I find that a interesting facet of her personality and its notable that one of the core things that she does to cope (poorly) with her trauma is to become incredibly hypersexual.

She swings from two extremes, primarily because she has never been able to set boundaries in any of her relationships, and when faced with such an extreme violation (the cauldron), she goes the opposite way; possibly thinking that it would spare her more pain than whatever she's currently feeling.

(It is also weird that author lady straight up implies that nesta's (whose incredibly modest) one night benders are a form of sexual self-harm and then turn around to say "its not really a problem for nesta" with her characterization for bat boy smut. smh)

The intervention makes this worse. By the end of acosf, she never truly establishes any healthy relationships on her own terms (sans the valkyries, but that can be dubious) and internalizes the idea that her needs and wants are ultimately secondary to the ic's desires, and that she will (should) only be loved conditionally.

I do believe that if nesta was allowed to heal on her own, she'd be too apathetic the ideas of "one true love" and mating bonds for it to be used to control her. She would also be impossible to be used to seduce other characters, like eris, as she would just refuse to do it.

We never get nesta being introspective on her relationship to sexuality because author lady believed it was inconsequential to what she wanted to write despite it being a vital component to nesta's character arc (and cassian's to some extent)

And also obviously, it would've been more interesting that nesta's story was about her love for her sisters and friends; how much of a ride or die she is for her loved ones as she learns to love herself instead of having to earn the conditional affection of a man who doesn't even like her. We were robbed.

On tamlin:

He's a bit more complicated because I think I read him differently from most popular interpretations of his character and many of his relationships (as it has been said by others) with the cast reeks of repression and comphet at times.

I'm not a huge fan of mating bonds, and the way sjm writes about them, the relationships are strangled by the bond (feysand in particular) or magical eugenics at best, which is, uh, not good.

So tamlin getting a mate, even at the end of a potential hea feels off to me, especially considering how fucked up and skewed like 90% of his relationships are in general.

His parents (the initial blueprint any child sees for relationships) had an unhealthy relationship with each other, with his mother standing by as his father abused his sons and just the fact that he felt so unsafe that he decided that joining the spring court's roaming war bands was a better option. As much as I enjoy tamsand (sometimes), their relationship possibly has always been unbalanced; with rhysand being the older, more experienced one between the two of them and then the mutual loss of their respective families (starting with rhysand's mom+sister) , which rhysand blames tamlin for and makes it his life work to torment tam for as long as he lives for that transgression.

This spirals over to what goes down in the books, culminating in rhysand telling tamlin to kill himself despite tamlin ultimately being the bigger person and saving his life when he had every reason to leave him dead and buried.

(I do believe both tam and rice were the age of majority when they became friends, but rhysand more than likely was a good amount older than tamlin. Tamlin also might've learned about positive relationships while in the armies; which is something to think about)

Then there's aramantha and feyre.

Both relationships are also incredibly fraught for different but interconnected reasons. Aramantha, a known sadistic general of hybern (and a slaver) pursued him and then cursed him when her (predatory) advances were still rebuked, even after stealing the power of the high lords, becoming the queen under the mountain.

Over the next 50 years, he slowly loses his friends as they're either tortured or sacrificed for the sake of breaking the curse (something he did not want to do, they left willingly) and is put in the position of world's shittiest trolly problem: find and use a mortal woman to save his people (compromising his morals entirely to save his people) or give in (something that would not work, no matter what the strawman might say). This is exacerbated by rhysand, who uses his limited position to torture tamlin even more for the sake of vendetta (genius move there, riceman)

Because of these factors, feylin is a relationship haunted by the shadows of the mountain. They love each other, the curse couldn't have been broken if neither of them loved each other, but feyre also died for him because of aramantha. Immediately afterwards he also has to deal with rebuilding his court with little to no support system, the threat of hybern (to both the courts and to feyre) and once again rhysand trying to get his pound of flesh.

What he did to feyre was abusive, full stop; but by god, this guy was operating on negatives. There is nothing that could've happened that someone wouldn't get hurt at the time and it is a testament to his character that he realized what was wrong and not only apologized, but actively tried to rectify his mistakes.

This is a bit incoherent, but I wonder how much of the latter half of feylin is tamlin also going through the motions of what a romantic relationship is supposed. Pre mountain, he was a lot more carefree, but there was always the sword of the curse hanging over his head; and afterwards ianthe was also pressuring him to be more of a "proper" hl, leaving little space to even process... anything. How much of his romancing was because he thought he was supposed to do this? Did he want to go through with the wedding, with how miserable feyre was or did he do it to bring his citizens own morale up while protecting feyre ?(in a completely misguided sense) there are too many moving pieces that feylin operates in that discounting context when talking about canon but..... we don't really have his pov to confirm or deny anything, ugh.

Before I end up going off on tangents, I do think that similar to nesta, love (romantically) wasn't something that he wanted but an obligation and duty he had to fulfill as a hl. Any desires he had were ultimately secondary to his divinely ordained job and unessesary. He values his friends and citizens deeply and there's a strong case to be made that tamlin subconsciously doesn't make the same distinctions most allos make towards romance and platonic intimacy, further complicating any relationships he has.

Tl;Dr ace/aro hc's for characters fuck hard.

I think we as a collective are sleeping on ace!Nesta and aroace!tamlin headcanons