#anti cassian
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.
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
I’m so sorry but I will never ever Stan Cassian. Idgaf. The line for me was drawn at the subtle misogyny he seems to display on a daily basis.
cassian sucks
These conversations about Nesta are really interesting. Because there’s the standard back and forth about the cottage situation –which is just a consequence of poor writing –but then there’s the conversation about domestic violence/abuse. The ability to call out abuse seems wholly dependent on the type of victim…not the actual abuse.
Because on one hand, a lot of people who whole-heartedly dislike Nesta usually recognize that Cassian is sort of abusive or at least they see the red flags in him, but their ability to empathize with that Nesta is stunted because they believe she deserves it. I think that’s why the intervention is so conflicted because the conversation regarding the actions taken by the IC isn’t actually all that contested. Everyone recognizes the problems (Rhys, Amren), it’s Nestathat’s the point of contention.
Of course, this is because SJM essentially writes this. It’s why I began to really dislike Feyre as a character (like how she’s written, not her as like a sentient person). It’s also why I titled my first set of posts ‘the perfect victim.’ That’s essentially what the story argues about the topic of abuse. Abuse is bad because Feyre is good, not because abuse is abuse. So, this trickles down to Nesta. She’s not a perfect victim, she’s not a 'good’ person. That’s the angle of the hiking scene, Cassian…wants revenge. The entirety of the IC wants a sort of revenge. You know when someone says a comment like: 'Your pretty for a black girl,’ or something along those lines? They do believe you’re beautiful, and they want to acknowledge that. But they still intrinsically believe you are inferior. It’s the same with the idea of the white savior, or something similar. The intervention is written to humiliate and get revenge on Nesta…but the story also needs to have this moral high ground.
I’m kind of eager to see more opinions because I think the points people are making about Nesta are so crazy because it’s like a weird kind of disconnect. It just really bothers me when people say things like Cassian is too good or when people justify some of those scenes.
I should note that this is a Cassian hate blog. He does notget enough hatred. Like–when you think about everything he does in SF, he’s abusive as shit. If I ever walk that wayward path and reread SF, I should just really focus on the very glaring problems with Cassian.
Most of fandom fantasizes about Cassian being a doting, himbo of a partner (one could only dream) but ACOSF affirmed he had no emotional maturity and does not affirm Nesta at all. It’s all conditional.
So colored me troubled when I see red flags about him being this doting, loving father but if he exhibits conditional love and stunted emotional maturity with the woman he loves (but doesn’t even say to her face), how would he actually parent tho?
Consider it from someone who grew up in a strict household with a very corporal father, Cassian is someone who does not tolerate insubordination and has an huge inferiority complex. That’s the military complex manifesting in man with little depth or personal discipline.
So when someone says he’s going to be this doting dad, I don’t see it because I see a man who cannot comprehend emotional outbursts but his own; who gets frustrated easily when his daughters act too much like their stubborn mother; he’s a man who lashes out impulsively and doesn’t think twice about his loaded words .
Can you imagine this man reaching his breaking point because his daughter is having a moment and saying something like “you’re so difficult! How can anyone love you?” And then struggling to back track that? If he can say that to Nesta when she’s trying to distance himself from a draining confrontation, how will he act to the door being slammed in his face because his daughter is overwhelmed and wants to have privacy? Like kid (especially girls) do??
Between him and Nesta, realistically Nesta would be the emotionally sensitive parent while Cassian would be the ticking time bomb to give his kids a complex because he doesn’t have the patience to handle people he can’t easily diffuse.
That’s my take and why each day I steer further away from Nessian. Fandom Nessian is great - but it’s so far from canon.
people are really out here defending s/jm and saying illyria doesn’t make a/cotar a misogynistic series when like??? it does???
there is constant and predominant misogyny in illyrian culture. the men view the women as objects to possess, servants for their households, and breeding stock. the men are “warriors” and “manly men” while the women are “mothers” and “cooks & cleaners”. the women literally get their wings clipped off to prevent them from fleeing illyria and the men that control their entire lives.
no, i’m not saying that having a misogynistic culture in your book makes the book itself misogynistic, but i am saying that what defines it as misogynistic or not is how you treat the misogyny within it.
if you write a book featuring misogynistic views or characters but actively condemn/combat it in the narrative, then that’s not considered misogynistic writing.
s/jm, however, does not do this with illyria. illyria is characterized solely as a “traditional” and “old view-y” country (in a bad way), and it is widely known that women are treated like dogshit.
r/hysie attempts to “fix things” by uhh forcing them to train (which most of them don’t even want to do) and a few other insignificant things that i can’t even remember, but these attempts are literally the most half-assed things i’ve ever witnessed.
so you’re telling me this man can become a tyrant’s slave to save his kingdom, fight an entire war, sacrifice himself at the end of it, and have a whole resurrection like he’s the second coming of christ, but he can’t really do anything to put an end to the sexism in his homeland? where was that energy when he was defending velaris? are the women of illyria not important enough to him to take more action the way he did with the priestesses that live in his library? didn’t he witness firsthand how the illyrians treated his mother? isn’t he supposed to be our resident feminist king? isn’t he also the self-proclaimed Most Powerful High Lord In Prythian™️? are you telling me that teaching some bitchy ass men a lesson on how to respect women is out of his jurisdiction? (then again, r/hysie isn’t exactly the best role model for respecting women, so ig it makes sense. it would be hypocritical of him to tell other men not to control the women in their lives when he’s out here controlling the women in his life everyday).
what’s worse is that the narrative just accepts that illyria and it’s deeply rooted misogynistic culture is a lost cause. r/hys, c/assian & a/zriel constantly comment on how illyrians are so rigid in their ways that there’s nothing they can do at this point, and the narrative agrees with them, forming the view that while they can control virtually everything else in prythian, illyria is, for reasons unbeknownst to any of us, an outlier.
and that’s such lazy fucking writing. it’s so lazy that they can force the other courts to do their bidding when it benefits them, that they can make other high lords and characters inferior to them when they want to, but they give up so easily on their own court and people. s/jm very clearly does not care enough to push her characters to do whatever they must to combat this misogyny, yet she’s out here praising them as the most feminist, morally superior, woke sons of bitches around.
and it’s also funny because she utilizes the illyrians as a) a source of trauma for r/hys & co. to make them “broody and deep and complex”, and b) as foil characters to prove that her fav bat boys are “good men”. the illyrians are all “cruel, bloodthirsty brutes” but the bat boys “worked so hard to ignore how they were raised and to be kinder and softer and ✨not like other bats✨” so we all must praise and adore them because they’re so great.
ma’am, when you’re trying to make a character look good, comparing them to characters that essentially have no positive traits or characterization is like comparing a teenager that shoplifted a pack of gum to a serial killer. it’s not fair to the other characters that they exist solely to make the main characters look “better”. well look what they could have been! how terrible, right? but see, they’re not like that because deep down they have hearts of gold that these guys don’t! they don’t even have hearts!
and isn’t it so knee-slapping hilarious that r/hysie is all iT’s yOuR cHoiCe until it’s actually his choice, or until he doesn’t care enough about you to give you a choice?
ah yes, our feminist king, choosing to sit on his ass and twiddle his thumbs all day while the women in his homeland are suffering the way his mother did and the men are being raised to learn and internalize the backwards views spread throughout their culture.
so all in all, a/cotar is a misogynistic series because it features a culture that actively oppresses women but does nothing about it and even normalizes it to the point where people are just like “yup, that’s illyria, the men are feral animals and the women are chattel. oh well ♀️”. don’t stand there and tell me this isn’t misogyny when the author herself wholeheartedly describes it as just that, then refuses to do anything about it.
(for my thoughts on the illyrians’ ethnic ambiguity see here)
when i tell you i see RED whenever i remember the way nesta was completely convinced she didn’t ‘deserve’ cassian.
ma’am, he is a literal MAN CHILD. he threw a full temper tantrum when you rejected his solstice gift (which you had every right to do btw you don’t owe it to him to take his pity gifts ✋) and yeeted it in the sidra like a toddler throwing a toy at the wall when their mom says it’s time to tidy up and go to bed. he makes it a point to tease you for your choice of reading material because he’s so immature that the thought of reading smut makes him crack up like a ninth grader hearing the word “erection” for the first time in a sex ed class. he couldn’t even stomach the sight of you dancing with another man when it was literally just part of an established plan because he’s as possessive as a kid that doesn’t want to let their friend have any other friends out of fear that they’ll ditch them for the others.
AND I JUST KNOW FOR A FUCKING FACT THAT THIS MAN’S HAIR IS GREASY ASF. I JUST KNOW IT. I FEEL IT IN MY BONES. THAT’S GOTTA BE WHY HIS SIGNATURE LOOK IS THE MAN BUN. TO HIDE ALL THAT HAIR OIL. YOU CANNOT TELL ME I’M WRONG.
…yk what? you’re right, nesta. you don’t deserve cassian.
you deserve better.
when i remember that cassian couldn’t even win over nesta the way a normal man should and could genuinely only get her when she was at the lowest, most vulnerable headspace of her life and when she was literally locked in a house with him so she had no other options and was practically forced to give him the time of day
the way the house of wind (a literal house) made nesta feel better, provided her more comfort, made her laugh and smile more times than cassian in the entirety of acosf
it bothered me so badly when nessian slept together on solstice and their bond snapped into place and they cried and promised to be together forever and then cassian … still got up after they fucked to leave the room and then nesta had to physically ask him to stay with her
would it have been so hard for that 500+ year old man child to take some initiative in his relationship and tell nesta he was staying with her? what was even the point of getting up to leave after such an emotional joining between them? it honestly just soured everything for me like STOP
and instead of running away for a week straight after and avoiding nesta and probably making her feel so insecure and worried that he didn’t actually want to be with her forever … couldn’t he have just sat down with nesta like a grown adult man and explained to her that their mating bond snapped into place but she didn’t have to accept it if she didn’t want to?
it’s so hard to explain why i disliked cassian so much in acosf but it’s because of all these little things that he dissapoints me over and over again in that just add up until he’s barely decent and just a shitty partner over all
‘you’ve been given an order. you know the consequences. if you don’t get off that fucking rock by the end of this week, what happens next is out of my hands’
not cassian threatening to send nesta to her death in the human lands if she doesn’t do what he says and follow his orders every time i try to get past my passionate hatred for acosf cassian i remember him threatening nesta and i become more convinced that the cauldron punished nesta for stealing it’s power by giving her cassian as a mate
spending eternity with a pathological gaslighter and his friends who hate her has to be nesta’s punishment for the bad things she’s done in her life
i just know nesta sleeps beside cassian with one eye open knowing he could lock her up in a house at any moment, could take her on a hike and revel in her punishment until she faints after a couple days due to exhaustion and dehydration, and is in danger of having her life threatened by his besties with zero chance of cassian standing up for her
applause for nesta the bravest girl in prythian!
Tell me this %100 doesn’t remind you of Nesta
“I can’t cry, I can’t depend on anyone else. I have to be good. That way my father won’t hate me so much but I hated my father. I’m so tired of it all. I want to disgrace myself. To get so dirty that no body can stand it.”
i mean this has been said before but let us just revisit. cause it is honestly so weird how s//jm thinks that the only way for women to heal from their traumas is through learning to fight…. like there was honestly NOTHING wrong with the library that was only for victims of sa (in fact it was one of the few aspects of s//jm’s books i actually liked….until f//eysand had sex there, why did that happen….)
instead of keeping the library a sanctuary where victims of sa can just be (exist)… she had nesta doing weird ass shit trying to push, again sa victims, wayyy out of their comfort levels and train with men who…. wait for it….. have canonically sexually harassed / assaulted (??? i can’t remember) women in the books.
- same thing with t0g, like there is honestly nothing wrong with healing through training and whatnot, but s//jm literally thinks the only way to heal is through picking up a sword like PLEASE give it a rest
p.s. — sorry for the bad wording and grammar, i suck at english :/
So tired of the “Nesta has hurt and wronged somany people” narrative because who are they talking about?
A case can be made for both Feyre and Cassian, sure. While a similar case can be made for their treatment towards her. But that’s literally it.
Rhysand? Please
Morrigan? Get over yourself
Elain? Out of the question
Azriel? Of course not
Amren? I. Wish.
Nesta isn’t the monster you all have made her out to be and she always delivers what she has been served. Treat her with respect and she will treat you accordingly.
