#anti acowar
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.
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.
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
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
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
