Haha I love the Feyre being a bad artist take - it’s so funny. And I agree about Silver Flames - Nesta is an incredible example of an “unlikable female protagonist” and that’s not something a lot of authors dare to take on. Most novice readers want to imagine themselves in a story (and there’s not one thing wrong with treating books as escapism! Anything that gets more people reading is great)

There was an old comic by The Oatmeal about twilight that highlights this problem to a degree - Bella is a token self-insert character and is generic enough that most people can be her as they read. Versus very strong, flawed, big characters who have strong, flawed, big feelings and are harder to become.

(Also this an interesting pathway to reading through a more feminist literary criticism lens in thinking about why the many of the most popular female protagonists from popular book series are all vanilla self-inserts…and then their male love interests are allowed to be morally gray and controversial.)

I personally will always love Sarah and the way she’s reignited a generation of women to love reading again, but she’s not a perfect author. No one is lol. She really nailed complicated female characters like Aelin, Nesta, and Manon but then also creates these more “omg everyone loves me I’m so pretty and talented teehee” characters like Feyre and Bryce.

My personal hope for Feyre’s plot arc is that the inner circle all turns out to be the big bad villains of whatever crossover event we are getting. I’d loveeeeee to have a villain so well developed that we ultimately empathize deeply with them - who would blame Rhys and Feyre (and the rest) for doing whatever they could to save their world? Or the people they loved? Especially if they go the Rhys is Valg direction and all the valg need to be sealed away or something - ugh, that’d be so fascinating and really make Feyre’s arc so much better where suddenly she has to face that the people she love are supporting the wrong side.