#anti acotar
The Night Court is a hotbed of cronyism and definitely to its detriment. Cassian has been a “general” for hundreds of years and yet remains admittedly inept at political manoeuvring and socialising with anyone outside of his family; Azriel is repeatedly fed bad information and is so terrible at spying that he resorts to butchering people for information instead, and is extraordinarily racist against the Illyrians; Mor can’t interact with anyone from the Court of Nightmares without having PTSD flashbacks, and yet it’s seen as appropriate for keep sending her there as an ambassador; Feyre is 22, clueless of Prythian’s history, totally reliant on Rhys for biased information about their political neighbours, and after learning how to write 1 year ago I imagine her written communication is abysmal—I don’t even want to know how she manages anything related to maths—and yet “her word is law”; and Amren repeatedly displays a desire to blow up entire cities or engage in conquest and that’s just tolerated.
All of these lawmakers, these all-powerful members of his political Inner Circle, wrestle daily with unresolved trauma. Rhys does not have a single emotionally healthy person in charge. And when all of this untreated mental turmoil comes out as some atrocity or violation of the rights of others, it’s just ~shrugs~. Their own people, and in fact a lot of other people across Prythian, are accepted as collateral for their squabbles with other rulers, or as meaningless casualties of their temper tantrums. Because of the positions of power they hold, their trauma becomes everyone else’s problem, with 0 accountability—and boy do they make the most out of that. Unreal that they haven’t been invaded or overthrown at this point.
Rhys encourages the Velaris locals to ostracise the citizens of the Court of Nightmares—to refuse them goods and services, as a punishment because he dislikes their leader, as if this isn’t a powder keg of social unrest waiting to blow. He steals from and attacks their neighbours with his daemati powers, not to mention openly orchestrating a plot to destabilise a neighbour. He allows (his idea or no, it happened on his watch) low-income housing to be destroyed in Velaris just to make a point to his sister-in-law. He cooks up this image of himself as a villain for 500 years and then expects his contemporaries to just blithely believe him when he says “oh i’m a good guy actually”. He lies through his teeth about everything, even to his wife, and rather than make any attempt to bring Keir’s army onside, he instead actively makes personal enemies of the Court of Nightmares’ leaders and civilians. The law against wing-clipping in Illyria is not enforced (why was Emerie’s father not prosecuted? How can Rhys be powerless to stop the men clipping the women’s wings, yet maintain enough control over the Darkbringer army, even when the CoN locals actively hate him, to send them out to fight on his behalf? He is the most powerful High Lord in history, and yet the wing-clipping is completely beyond him?) and he hoards an obscene amount of wealth, far too much for it to be believable that he is not economically exploiting his people outside of Velaris. In order for one person to be that rich, other people have to be poor.
It’s kind of shocking that Velaris hasn’t yet been besieged. Although it’s explicitly stated that the Illyrians are disenfranchised enough to want to rebel—only they are terrorised out of doing so by threats from Cassian.
Rhys is an awful politician. Truly awful. Dire.
you know what? fuck you. just fuck you. i already know this book is not about nesta or her journey to grow as a person or heal from her trauma. how dare you dedicate 1233 pages of garbage, toxic relationships propaganda and full of self hate for girls out there who are feeling helpless? what are you trying to teach them? fuck you.
I jokingly said i was in offended over sjm use of Celtic names and somebody asked why I felt like I was lying when I told them I wasnt actually offended. So I thought about it some more.
It’s not necessarily being offended, but it’s how she mashes different cultures together and doesn’t seem to care of things are done properly. She takes the history of different cultures and warps it to fit her narrative.
From using Celtic names to now having Valkyries. She picks and chooses what she uses, not bothering to be consistent in her world building. It’s not even being influenced by a certain culture, she just literally takes a part of it to put in her books.
She talks about slavery in tog, but she doesn’t engage with the issue or present anything meaningful. Instead, she uses it as part of her narrative and she uses the suffering of black people to provoke sympathy for a white woman.
She never makes an effort to understand the history of these cultures or myths and just takes what sounds ‘cool’ and puts it in her books.
Everyday I wake up thinking about how Manon would actually help Nesta with her training but not only would she try to understand her motivations or why she did what she did but try to make Nesta get through her negative emotions IN A HEALTHY WAY.
yes, janet— you finally did it! book stans are finally aware that your precious high lord is a shitty person and no, it was never feyre’s choice! congratulations!
Azriel thinking he should and is entitled to be Elain’s mate because her sisters are his brothers mates and he has feelings for her, while Elain has been talking about not wanting a mating bond in the first place for a long time, should already show that he is not thinking about what she wants whatsoever, and that makes me furious.
fav ship dynamic
editor: so whats feyres last name
sarah:
sarah: her what
editor: you know, her last name????
sarah:
sarah: it’s ….. well she… archery?
editor: ? do you mean archeron?
sarah:
sarah: YES—! YES THATS WHAT I SAID.
Alright, my good people.
Who’s gonna rewrite AC0T4R?
its 19:19 pm so its officially slandering acto*r hours
Jk every day is hating acot*r day
In light of the horrible treatment of sapphic/queer coded and/or woc characters by sarah janet, it’s time for some malide x mesta x nehemia/sorscha fics, and if I can’t find them I sure as hell will write them.
Whenever SJM writes something along the lines of
- “he growled”
- “she bared her teeth”
- “he purred”
You have to ask yourself: is that actually sexy? Because to me it sounds like third graders role playing Warrior Cats at recess but ship it I guess ♀️
So I started reading Croissant City
And might I say, just this one thought for now, her obsession with violence would borderline on fucking creepy (or generally just strange), but she lacks the ability to properly write violence into a scene at all and instead it ends up sounding completely ridiculous, over-done, and like she tries too hard, but it’s doesn’t sound like any effort was properly or actively made whatsoever????
I made this while I was drunk one night and never posted it. I remember seeing someone who had re-written acotar/tog or like had ideas for a rewrite?? Idk I thought it was great and did this. Oops
I’d honestly be so embarrassed to be in my 20s and still stanning Sarah J Maas. Like I feel like teenagers get a small window, but at this point some of y’all just need to be hit in the face with a brick for refusing to see and understand what is so clearly presented to you
Whew. I—Sjm really said, that’s enough activism for today.
(For everyone who may not have seen the bullshit this woman has tried ) Edit: My thoughts on this. It’s going to be messy buttttt
Maas very easily could’ve posted petitions for the justice of Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Dominique Fells, Sandra Bland and signal boosted privately owned black businesses, etc. Even a post about the stories about Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, George Floyd, and every innocent black life lost at the hands of a dirty racist pig. She could’ve found one of the thousand resources discussing the importance of this movement, the history, the importance of white people needing to shut the fuck up and LISTEN, white privilege, and posted it etc. but she didn’t. Instead she made a few posts so it LOOKED like she stood with Black Lives Matter and that was all undermined by her inability to sit down and shut the fuck up and listen when a person of color is telling her that her books are a problem and her representation fucking sucks. Add more or correct me if you feel the need to
So y’all thought it was just a coincidence that the only brown characters/described race of people in Maas’s series were described as “savage” and having “backwards practices/ways” ??? Huh
Your inner colonizer is showing, sweatys
Sarah J Maas does a great job of making sure to not describe Bruce or flappy bird 3.0 as brown.Like she will use the descriptor brown for other side characters, like the Witch and I believe Justinian but she will not have Bruce or flappy bird 3.0 being brown. Instead, they are golden brown.
That’s it. That’s all I had to say. Looks a little strange but what do I know
making it known that i absolutely will NOT be reading the new s//jm book but i WILL be reading ur reviews and thoughts bc nothing entertains me more
S/jm’s writing style is the kind that makes me hyper-aware of her presence in the story. She always tells me what to think, rather than letting characters’ actions speak for themselves.
For that reason, it’s hard for me to me to really blame the characters that she wants me to hate because I don’t view their actions as their own. Meanwhile, the characters I know she loves (f/eysand) become increasingly unbearable.
And I know that authors decide everything on a literal level, but usually their decisions feel so organic that I don’t even notice. I think this has to do with s/jm’s tendency to tell rather than show (characterization is usually an exposition dump like the dinner scene in acomaf or the cabin confession).
And it sparks this reaction in me where I despise the characters she wants me to love and tolerate the characters she wants me to hate.
as mentioned, i think this is simply because s//jm cannot for the life of her have proper characterization.
her characters’ personalities are so one dimensional and bland that even major plot points and climaxes are fall short due to how bad the characterization actually is.
i mean…. just thinking of how she writes her antagonists / villains, they are so one dimensional it’s almost laughable.
back to post about f//eysand’s behaviour in the library because WHAT?!??
i’m convinced s//jm and her entire team NEVER understand the implications of what she writes cause why on earth would she write her oh so perfect protags to engage in any type of sexual behaviour in a safe space made for victims of sa.
it doesn’t even take a genius to understand the nuance of what’s going on here cause:
- the way the library is set up in the novels, clotho has to grant access for anybody (regardless of status) to enter
- this means clotho has trusted them enough to allow f//eysand into her and other women’s safe space
- granting them access means clotho expects them to act with the utmost respect and dignity for both the space they are in and the people that are there
- f//eysand continue to have sex (?? i can’t remember if they go all the way)
- they’ve now broken clotho’s trust, disrespected the place they are in and the people there, as well as potentially exposed victims of sa to sexual behaviour without their consent
except nothing in the last point actually happens and s//jm just continues her novel as if nothing happened. as if this is completely fine. because apparently, s//jm’s #1 rule is that horny trumps all.
**p.s. there’s definitely more to this but i’m a dummy who can’t analyze and communicate properly
I find it fitting that almost every fanart I’ve seen of Rhysand has him looking like a 40-something dude that has at least 2 restraining orders against him bc, after reading ACOTAR, it’s EXACTLY how I imagined him (minus the tan skin bc in the first book he’s a cracker).
Although I can not imagine that it was the artist’s intention when drawing him
- Feyre was not as insufferable as Celeana was, but in return she barely had any personality
- I loathed, hated, despised the fae in SJM’s world. I can not take them seriously with their growling and roaring and purring.
- Tamlin was boring as stale bread and he and Feyre had little to no chemistry, going into this book with the knowledge that he’s not the endgame love interest but instead becomes a villain may have influenced my lack of investment somewhat but eh
- Tamlin, in this book, was a decent enough person, not classist and not pro-slavery and he was not afraid of getting his own hands dirty to protect his people despite being royalty
- Do not know why he was named after Tam Lin though, nothing about the story from the Ballad of Tam Lin had anything to do with his book’s plot. I assume SJM just chose it because of the vague parallels between Tam Lin’s story and BatB
- I hate the fae in SJM’s world. The constant descriptions likening them to ~predators~ and ~born to kill without remorse~ was just cringeworthy. Write about werewolves or take the plunge and write about omegaverse ffs
- I do not like Rhysand. SJM’s justifications for his actions were laughable and in one case made him actually look worse i.e. implying the only reason he didn’t “fully” sexually assault Feyre while he drugged her almost every night for two months being that he needed a “claim to innocence” to not have Tamlin on his ass. But otherwise he would have loved to “enjoy her” (*gag*).
- Feyre’s name being Feyre is stupid and I HATE IT. NO HUMAN IN A WORLD WHERE THEY HATE FAE WOULD NAME THEIR CHILD THAT
- The mask thing was stupid and useless as a way to “hide Tamlin’s beauty”. Actively makes Amarantha look like a fucking idiot
- also I constantly forgot Tam and his court wore the masks
- THE FUCKING RIDDLE AND FEYRE’S FIRST MENTAL GUESSES FOR THE ANSWER. NO BRAIN CELL IN SIGHT
- also the fact that Amarantha told every to not help makes me think everyone already knew the answer was love the second she finished saying the riddle
- Amarantha with all her vain, petty resentfulness and rigged, unfair contests was the closest thing to a proper fae I got. Would have loved to see her threaten to petrify someone’s eyeballs at least once.
- Did I mention I do not like SJM’s fae bc I really, really do not
