u/KhalenPierce

Hey friends! I’d recently responded (https://www.reddit.com/r/Maasverse/s/jc0jWCLaxH) to a post on Reddit where OP was basically like “I don’t plan on reading Crescent City, you can’t convince me otherwise, just please fill me in on the lore that I need before ACOTAR 6.” I gave (what I think is) a pretty good summary, which a lot of other people appreciated. I’ve decided to turn this into a 5 part series on tiktok explaining the key details for either people who read and can’t remember/don’t want to reread, or ACOTAR fans who really don’t want to read Crescent City. Technically, this will be a 10 part series since I’m also going to put together a memecut recap for each of the 5 sections lol. Anyway, part one is up now and the other 4 parts will be coming soon!

The parts will be (spoilers for CC, obviously): Midgard Crash Course, The Daglan Went WHERE???, Prison Party, Dread Trove Divas, and Prythian Problems.

Prepost edit: not sure if this goes against the advertising rules although that wasn’t my intention, so uh…. i deleted the tiktok link, and just know it’s out there lol

Hey friends! I’d recently responded (https://www.reddit.com/r/Maasverse/s/jc0jWCLaxH) to a post on Reddit where OP was basically like “I don’t plan on reading Crescent City, you can’t convince me otherwise, just please fill me in on the lore that I need before ACOTAR 6.” I gave (what I think is) a pretty good summary, which a lot of other people appreciated. I’ve decided to turn this into a 5 part series on tiktok explaining the key details for either people who read and can’t remember/don’t want to reread, or ACOTAR fans who really don’t want to read Crescent City. Technically, this will be a 10 part series since I’m also going to put together a memecut recap for each of the 5 sections lol. Anyway, part one is up now and the other 4 parts will be coming soon!

The parts will be (spoilers for CC, obviously): Midgard Crash Course, The >!Daglan!< Went WHERE???, >!Prison!< Party, >!Dread Trove!< Divas, and Prythian Problems.

Prepost edit: not sure if this goes against the advertising rules although that wasn’t my intention, so uh…. i deleted the tiktok link, and just know it’s out there lol

Hi folks! I have been working on a really long paper breaking this theory that I have down. Currently 34 pages and 76 quotes down, only about halfway done😅 I wanted to drop my intro and abstract here for early thoughts/to see if anyone else has been picking up on similar things! Also adding a one paragraph summary of the sections that I do have completed so far, and I’ll put my TOC outline in the comments so you can kinda see where I’m planning on going.

OVERVIEW

Can the divine energy of the Maasverse be influenced through music? This is a theory that I have been working on for some time, but it originally felt too far-fetched (seriously, reread that first sentence) to be worth seriously pursuing. That changed with Sarah J. Maas’ March 4th instagram post. As you may/not know, SJM assigns each of her books specific representative emojis when announced: a crown for KOA, a flame for ACOSF, an otter for HOSAB, etc. These emojis are also in her instagram bio. For the ACOTAR 6 & 7, the emoji she has given is a collection of music notes (🎶). Thus, I finally sat down to put my thoughts to paper. Note: I am relying on the string theory theories a bit, and will be referring to string theory as string physics to prevent myself from double or triple theory-ing as I write.

IN THIS ESSAY, I ARGUE: MOTHER IS MOTHERING

> RE: Quote 7 (Ithan & Under-King, House of Flame and Shadow, Ch. 81)

> [Ithan] and Hypaxia stood before the Under-King in a gray-stoned temple to Urd. The Under-King lounged on a throne beneath a behemoth statue of a figure holding a black metal bowl between her upraised hands. Symbols were carved all over the bowl, continuing down her fingers, her arms, her body. Ithan could only assume it was meant to represent Urd. No other temples ever depicted the goddess, no one even dared—most people claimed that fate was impossible to portray in any one form. But it seemed that the dead, unlike the living, had a vision of her. And those symbols running from the bowl onto her skin ... they were like tattoos. They looked oddly familiar. [...] “And she,” the Under-King went on, gesturing to that unusual depiction of Urd towering above him, “was not a goddess, but a force that governed worlds. A cauldron of life, brimming with the language of creation. Urd, they call her here—a bastardized version of her true name. Wyrd, we called her in that old world.”

Wyrd is the real main character of the Maasverse. She goes by The Mother, The Cauldron, Urd, maybe names we haven’t learned or recognized yet. She's got a lot of names because she’s older than the languages people use to name her, and a lot of faces because fate takes too many forms to pin down. She is the source of all life, all magic, and all reality across every world in this multiverse. As the Under-King says, she’s "a force that governed worlds." She’s not a goddess, not a person, not a cauldron, not a language, but the fabric of reality itself. The source and the foundation from which all else comes to be. And the Maasverse, generally speaking, is the story of what happens when she gets exploited. All 3 of our series start with a seed of a mystery - those who wield magic are unable or weaker than they should be, because someone is pulling the strings in the background. These narratives ask: who seizes the instruments of power, what does that cost the worlds they bleed dry, and how do our heroes eventually figure out what’s wrong and do something about it. Mother Wyrd kinda reminds me quite a little of the world spirit in James Cameron’s Avatar movies in that way.

There are THOUSANDS of  fan theories about where it's all going. Most of them read the tea leaves of character arcs and foreshadowing, and I am asking a different question. I want to dissect this hoe (as in, Elain loves gardening hoes) from the inside out. If you can actually characterize what magic is, what reality is, and how the mechanics all work, you get a foundation you can use for basically everything else. The bet I’m making is that if you understand the battlefield, you have a better shot at predicting the battles.

My argument is that the fabric of the Maasverse (Mother Wyrd) is (possibly sentient) vibrational energy. Specifically “strings” in the string physics sense, which SJM has namedropped in interviews and which have been hiding in plain sight as easter eggs across all three series. Those strings vibrate and form different bubble universes (this is a concept from string physics, not mine), each with its own rules and theoretically manipulable by anyone smart enough to alter the resonance of said strings. Sound and music are the primary way that manipulation happens via the Harp, the Horn, and the language of creation itself. And every single FMC in this multiverse has a relationship to music that goes way past "she just really loves music!" once you look closer.

Light is the second way. Same wavelength physics as sound, different frequencies. It's everywhere! We have firstlight, secondlight, healing light, starlight, Mala's fire, moonfire, spellcleaving light, Theia pulling a star out of her own chest and splitting it three ways using the Harp. String physics allows sound and light to both be part of the same magic system working with the same vibrating strings. The times where sound and light show up at the same time (which frequently happens during the big moments) are not a coincidence.

Then we have the materials. Quartz and Wyrdstone/obsidian (black salt contains obsidian) are everywhere reality gets thin and magic gets thiqq in this universe. The gates, ritual sites, objects of power, Asteri palaces, and thin places are all related to them. Their actual real world physics/the way they interact with sound and light are very well suited to what SJM has built around them. 

And then there's Koschei. Ancient, imprisoned, deathless, very much a problem. The Irish and Slavic mythology SJM is pulling from for his character (Koschei the Deathless is an actual mythic antagonist) has a very specific relationship to music, female captivity, objects of power, mountains, and islands. I believe the Koschei conflict we are building towards is where our heroes will finally understand the vibrating fabric of reality. The Asteri were motivated to figure that out because they got munchies and had to skedaddle from their home world, the Inner Circle is motivated to figure that out so that they can explain where the **** Bryce came from, how she got there, and how to beat Koschei.

Section Summaries:

Why Would SJM Connect Music to the Divine

&gt; SJM has a Religious Studies degree and has spent her entire career pulling from global mythologies and examining how religions organize around core concepts and venerated forces. One of the earliest ways humans practiced religion was through music and ritual! It’s a big part of how we bonded as societies and interacted with forces we deemed divine. It makes sense that an author with that background would turn to music when asking what it means for a character to interact with divine forces, or for those forces to shape reality itself.

Quick Primer on String Physics

&gt; String physics replaces point particles with tiny vibrating strings whose different vibrational patterns produce what we perceive as matter. It requires more than the three spatial dimensions we’re used to (usually 10, 11, or 26 depending on which school of theory you’re talking about) and these extra dimensions fold and layer in ways that allow universes to occupy the same space while remaining separated. The Harp has 26 strings. Merrill’s research lands on 26 dimensions. Aelin counts 11 worlds during her fall, which aligns with M-Theory. Etc. SJM has name dropped string physics before, which is an incredibly niche multiverse/parallel universe interpretation vs other theories (string physics is better known for reconciling relativity and quantum physics).

String Physics, Vibrational Energy, and Bubble Universes

&gt; Instead of a multiverse following one set of rules (Many-Worlds multiverse theory of quantum physics and most other physics schools), string physics says these vibrating strings settle into different configurations, each creating its own bubble universe with its own laws kind of like different chords from the same guitar strings. The universes originate from the same strings but resonate differently, which means some things overlap between worlds while others don’t. This allows for both magic systems/rules to slightly differ, and allows for the idea of an interdimensional parasite scouring the multiverse for different degrees of uniformity. Where the dimensional geometry of a given universe folds back on itself (where bubble universes border each other), the veil between them theoretically thins. Magic that looks like ley lines and conduits? Those are concentrated manifestations of the underlying string energy, same way hot metal glows while cold metal doesn’t. Same metal, different amount of energy running through it.

Plucking the Strings

&gt; If the fabric of reality is made of vibrating strings, then you need precision instruments to manipulate them. Enter the Harp and the Horn! The Harp has 26 strings, each tuned to one of the 26 dimensions, and through music can open doors, leap through space, even manipulate time itself. The Horn is blunter but faster: it’ll get you where you need to go without as much skill. Both a harp and a horn are resonant instruments that alter the vibration of sound waves. Wyrdmarks are glyphs that function as a recipe for a designed outcome, operating like music notation where each mark has a specific frequency and order that matters, and changing the marks around them changes the meaning (just like a sharp or flat symbol modifies a note). Like music notes, they’re universal, readable across worlds/different spoken languages, and work with or without an instrument present. There is a whole argument from human history and early mathematicians that the universe is written the language of music (see google doc, way too complicated to explain here). Merrill studies dimensions, Aelin understands Wyrdmarks as tapestry threads connecting all things together after feeling her fire meld with music. Music and math are the same language (time signatures are fractions, chords are mathematical ratios), and Wyrdmarks can function as both simultaneously. This gives SJM everything: she can implement actual string physics rules without going sci-fi, where characters feel Wyrd through music instead of theorizing it, where the Asteri’s science and the priestesses’ faith live on the same planet/operate on the same force, and where things just work.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Music is the perfect vehicle to reconcile mathematics with divinity without deep diving either.

Music Throughout the Maasverse

&gt; This is 11 pages of quotes divided by character, but I also have a summary table in the paper. Anyway, every FMC in the series has either a deep personal connection to music or a transcendental musical experience. Aelin’s pianoforte sounds like “the heartsong of a god” and helps her understand Wyrdmarks as living tapestry; Yrene’s healing power resonates with bells in the Torre chamber that opens her mind during visions; Feyre perceives magic as music when her human glamours lift, and her mating bond with Rhysand is described as a song sung since the beginning of light; Nesta’s Cauldron-stolen power is consistently called music and she scries in the underground stone chamber while Gwyn’s singing triggers the vision; Gwyn physically glows when she sings and works with Merrill on the exact dimensional research that connects to the Harp’s 26 strings; Azriel’s shadows dance to music; and Bryce becomes “song given form” when she dances, then falls into “the golden light and song at the heart of the universe” during the Drop. Feyre, Nesta, and Yrene all have visions/breakthroughs in underground caverns where music is present and resonating in their own bones + the cavern walls. The pattern is clear. When vibrational energy (Wyrd/Urd) concentrates enough (through mating bonds, accidental visions, the actual power source of creation), characters perceive it through music. But an interesting thing too: Bryce didn’t just feel music at the heart of the universe. She felt music AND golden light simultaneously, as a single experience. Which [is my segue into talking about the other easy analogy for vibrating wavelengths, which is light].​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

To be compliant with the subreddit rules, I’m also giving the link to a draft version of the paper here, so that the citations I’m relying on are accessible without actually pasting all 76 of them here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mFl5O5ft8Lo3ybofSLjhxcpuLhzP_CMAlQmKGi8MHOc/edit?usp=drivesdk