#anti sarah j maas
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.
For anyone that’s interested, here’s my goodreads review of ACOSF. I made this the day after reading it, so my thoughts and opinions have been further cemented, but unfortunately I ran out of space to write anymore to it with evidence. Maybe I’ll write a longer review here ♀️ (depends if I can be bothered wasting more energy and head space on acotar )
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3735575564
Bec’s review of A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4)
Rhys didn’t tell Feyre that they were mates in ACOMAF. Feyre gets angry that he kept it from her.
Rhys didn’t tell Feyre that the child she carried would kill her. Feyre gets angry that he kept it from her.
What do we call that? Development. We love a man who learns from his mistakes ♀️
See, I hated ACOSF because, to me, it wasn’t a story of healing - it was a story of a woman who is slowly brainwashed by her abusers into thinking that she is actually the abuser. She is controlled at the beginning, straight up threatened and manipulated, then slowly her thoughts are twisted into thinking that these people controlling her life know best. Instead of breaking free of these people - she falls further under their control. And she feels happy about it, and grateful to these people, because she believes no one else will accept her. It’s classic abusive tactics. And all of them do that (maybe with the exception of Feyre but Rhys and Armen definitely and in many cases Cassian (which breaks my nessian loving heart)). Don’t believe me, I can pull up receipts (I went through and pulled out every example in the text and the other acotar books) ♀️
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
✨♀️
So I used to be halfbloodcarstairsbut I am now anti-sjmessy!!!!!! :))
I just thought I’d make a proper post about it is all because I’ve been halfbloodcarstairs for a little over 2 years and most of my stuff is watermarked with that so I guess I just thought I’d help avoid any confusion that may arise!! :)
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
i’ve seen a lot of discourse here and on reddit regarding whether the illyrians are poc or not, so i thought i’d give my two cents.
you see, s/jm wrote herself into a hole when it comes to the ethnic ambiguity of the illyrians, and let me explain why.
the illyrians are all said to have tan skin. contrary to popular belief in this fandom, tan skin does not = poc. europeans living in predominantly hot areas can get very tan due to the constant sunlight. this does not make them poc because skin color is not the only factor to consider when identifying someone as a poc. if this were true, many poc with lighter or white skin (like east asians or biracial/multiracial poc who are white-passing) would technically not be considered poc.
there are other features that can identify someone as a poc—eye shape, nose shape, eyebrows, hair, etc. the illyrian physical characteristics include tan skin, dark hair, brown eyes, and bat wings. imo there is nothing concretely proving that they are or aren’t poc based off of their physical traits alone.
however, where s/jm screws up is when it comes to f/eyre (and nesta, but we’ll get to that in a second).
f/eyre can “shift” into an illyrian by growing wings, an ability she somehow gained from r/hysand when he gave her some of his power.
if you want to make the argument that illyrians are poc, then f/eyre technically cannot “be” an illyrian when she shifts into one, because you cannot shift from a white person to a poc. that’s basically like doing blackface/brownface, for example, or using makeup to alter the shape of your eyes to make them more “almond” shaped, like east asian eye shapes (see: the fox eye trend).
yet the story very clearly states that f/eyre is “in illyrian form” when she has these wings.
if you want to argue that “well they’re just wings she isn’t changing skin tone or other physical features”, this is incredibly incorrect. illyrian wings are part of the illyrian physical characteristics, the way hair or eye shape is part of poc characteristics. so if you do consider illyrians poc, then you have to acknowledge that f/eyre as a white woman is appropriating another culture, and that is not okay. not to mention r/hysand & co. are all fine with f/eyre doing this (it even turns r/hys on ), and no one finds any issue with her changing her body to resemble that of the oppressed women in a poc culture.
so the illyrians really cannot be anything other than white if s/jm wants to keep her precious f/eyre from being called out by the fandom for gross cultural appropriation.
in addition, nesta is constantly described by cassian as being “illyrian” due to her stubborn & cold mannerisms. if illyrians are poc, you shouldn’t compare a white woman to them.
realistically, would you compare a white person to people from another culture just because they act like them? for example, asians are stereotypically made out to be incredibly smart, so if you have a very smart white person is it okay to refer to them as asian or asian-like? of course not. claiming that stereotypical mannerisms exist in a race is in and of itself unacceptable as well (sticking with the asian stereotype example—being part of an asian culture that puts a lot of emphasis on intelligence is not the same as stereotyping all asians in that culture as intelligent).
for cassian to do this actually proves in a way that the illyrians are not considered poc by him, because no poc would stand there and attribute the stereotypes of their mannerisms to a white person.
so i believe s/jm purposely tried to make the illyrians ethnically ambiguous to combat the claims that she is racist and writes exclusively white characters, but she made grave mistakes with f/eyre and nesta that contradict her attempt at writing a poc culture.
additionally, if she did write the illyrians as poc in her mind, it is still inherently racist writing to create a poc culture that is entirely misogynistic, sexist, and brimming with toxic masculinity (i have more thoughts on the illyrian culture coming soon—i’ll link it here once it’s posted).
I do agree with this but I would like to also point out that Feyre did in fact shape-shift into a poc: Tarquin when stealing his half of the book.
Additionally, to put the cherry on top, Illyrians are named after a european ethnic group of people that did exist and would be considered white today. (Anciet Illyrians lived in the north-southern balkans and their modern decedents are very much white). This is not to say that the bats have to be white but rather to add another layer on how bad the writing is
pls i had zero memory of f/eyre doing that and now i’m steaming all over again ♀️. that’s actually disgusting and even more unacceptable because unlike the illyrians, tarquin is explicitly stated to be a poc.
but yeah, just to comment on your tags and expand a little further, ik a lot of readers consider the illyrians to be ethnically ambiguous and therefore choose to envision them as poc, and i respect this choice.
however, i intensely dislike and disagree with this notion of ethnic ambiguity because ethnicity isn’t something that can be ambiguous. you either are or aren’t a poc, and since s/jm has clearly shown her capability to depict poc, i don’t believe she depicted the illyrians as poc in any concrete way.
if s/jm did mean for them to be poc, she did a terrible job depicting their race and also has to acknowledge f/eyre’s gross treatment of a poc culture (so should her stans if they feel the illyrians are poc). additionally, now that you’ve mentioned tarquin (thank you because i think i blacked that event out just from sheer rage lmao) this is yet another cultural insult both f/eyre & s/jm have to own up to and apologize for.
i personally would like to think of the illyrians as poc considering how greatly lacking in diversity the series is, but the way they are written/depicted as a race is done so carelessly and vaguely that i really struggle to imagine they’re not white. additionally, it doesn’t sit well with me to tie a poc culture to a culture full of misogyny/sexism (more on that here), so i’d rather not.
also, thank you for the background info on the ancient illyrians! i’ve never heard of that before and it really just helps solidify my opinion on the (a/cotar) illyrian race.
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)
i’ve seen a lot of discourse here and on reddit regarding whether the illyrians are poc or not, so i thought i’d give my two cents.
you see, s/jm wrote herself into a hole when it comes to the ethnic ambiguity of the illyrians, and let me explain why.
the illyrians are all said to have tan skin. contrary to popular belief in this fandom, tan skin does not = poc. europeans living in predominantly hot areas can get very tan due to the constant sunlight. this does not make them poc because skin color is not the only factor to consider when identifying someone as a poc. if this were true, many poc with lighter or white skin (like east asians or biracial/multiracial poc who are white-passing) would technically not be considered poc.
there are other features that can identify someone as a poc—eye shape, nose shape, eyebrows, hair, etc. the illyrian physical characteristics include tan skin, dark hair, brown eyes, and bat wings. imo there is nothing concretely proving that they are or aren’t poc based off of their physical traits alone.
however, where s/jm screws up is when it comes to f/eyre (and nesta, but we’ll get to that in a second).
f/eyre can “shift” into an illyrian by growing wings, an ability she somehow gained from r/hysand when he gave her some of his power.
if you want to make the argument that illyrians are poc, then f/eyre technically cannot “be” an illyrian when she shifts into one, because you cannot shift from a white person to a poc. that’s basically like doing blackface/brownface, for example, or using makeup to alter the shape of your eyes to make them more “almond” shaped, like east asian eye shapes (see: the fox eye trend).
yet the story very clearly states that f/eyre is “in illyrian form” when she has these wings.
if you want to argue that “well they’re just wings she isn’t changing skin tone or other physical features”, this is incredibly incorrect. illyrian wings are part of the illyrian physical characteristics, the way hair or eye shape is part of poc characteristics. so if you do consider illyrians poc, then you have to acknowledge that f/eyre as a white woman is appropriating another culture, and that is not okay. not to mention r/hysand & co. are all fine with f/eyre doing this (it even turns r/hys on ), and no one finds any issue with her changing her body to resemble that of the oppressed women in a poc culture.
so the illyrians really cannot be anything other than white if s/jm wants to keep her precious f/eyre from being called out by the fandom for gross cultural appropriation.
in addition, nesta is constantly described by cassian as being “illyrian” due to her stubborn & cold mannerisms. if illyrians are poc, you shouldn’t compare a white woman to them.
realistically, would you compare a white person to people from another culture just because they act like them? for example, asians are stereotypically made out to be incredibly smart, so if you have a very smart white person is it okay to refer to them as asian or asian-like? of course not. claiming that stereotypical mannerisms exist in a race is in and of itself unacceptable as well (sticking with the asian stereotype example—being part of an asian culture that puts a lot of emphasis on intelligence is not the same as stereotyping all asians in that culture as intelligent).
for cassian to do this actually proves in a way that the illyrians are not considered poc by him, because no poc would stand there and attribute the stereotypes of their mannerisms to a white person.
so i believe s/jm purposely tried to make the illyrians ethnically ambiguous to combat the claims that she is racist and writes exclusively white characters, but she made grave mistakes with f/eyre and nesta that contradict her attempt at writing a poc culture.
additionally, if she did write the illyrians as poc in her mind, it is still inherently racist writing to create a poc culture that is entirely misogynistic, sexist, and brimming with toxic masculinity (more thoughts on the illyrian culture here).
Okay, so I was watching this video (I’ll link it here) and defined the way SJM specifically uses her characters her explicitly defined POC characters.
I have had discussions with other people on here about the pattern that SJM has in humiliating or undermining her explicitly defined black and brown characters in order to implement the superiority of her white-coded characters. Helion, Sorscha, Lucien, Tarquin, Nehemia, Fenrys, Demetria, and Baxian (I’m sure they are others, but these are the ones that are near irrefutable) are all used in a similar manner in relation to their white counterparts: as either what the video calls the “Disposable Black Love Interest,” or it’s protagonist based equivalent.
The Take references Yomi Adegoke, defining the DBLI as “a race bent, gender-specific version of the ‘disposable fiancee’ or ‘romantic false lead trope,” (The Rise and Rise of the Disposable Black Girlfriend).
This evolution of those previously mentioned tropes not only tokenizes the perceived racial representation but upholds the idea of whiteness as a social and beauty standard. More, this trope presents black people as a near-perfect standard, creating a character that is actually better than the white love interest, but plastic and unworthy in comparison to the white LI mediocracy.
Further, the disposable love interest or protagonist is almost always used as a stepping stone to reiterate the supposed superiority of the white love interest. Nothing the black/brown love interest can do can compare to the perceived “complexity” of the mediocre white counterpart.
When Feyre and Tarquin interact with one another, he and Feyre reiterate similar sentiments. They are much more alike with one another than Feyre and Rhysand: both are young, idealistic, powerful, and look at the world in similar ways. Feyre even suggests that it would easy to fall in love with someone like him—yet the story makes a point to alsoreiterate that Tarquin (who has been UTM for fifty years—more than half his life, had his entire family killed, and was thrust into a power role and still plotted rebellion, and so on) isn’t good enough for Feyre. And the story literally doesn’t have an actual, honest to god reason why–but it’s honestly pretty clear. Rhys is just perceived as better. Better because he is “more complex” and understands Feyre’s “darkness,” *sigh* But the humiliation for Tarquin is very much a running thread in the story. Feyre and Rhys steal from him, cause the destruction of his court, and then undermine him in his own court. And the story doesn’t feel the need to give consequences because it’s just expected that Tarquin will forgive them.
Then we have Helion—who is used in a similar manner in relation to Cassian andalso with his relationship with LOA. Feyre makes a comment about Helion “not even able to step in to help LOA” or “we wouldn’t even help the woman he loved”(it was something along those lines, if i remember correctly). It’s such a weird, loaded thing to say about one of the only dark-skinned characters in the story. Which plays into yetanother stereotype of the “cowardly” black/brown character v. the heroic white character (i.e. Rhys v. Helion). Like, fuck you Feyre
And this is a segway into the way Lucien has been characterized in the story. While Lucien has always been heroic when protecting Feyre (to a fault *cough* which plays into another horrible trope). But he’s still coded as…cowardly. Lucien was once meant to be Nesta’s love interest, but after being retconned into a man of color, he is caught in a love triangle that potentially plays off the disposable black love interest trope. He is a conduit for continual pain and suffering and is potentially going to be used to subvert the mating bond trope. There are so many reasons why the “breaking the bond trope,” being used to reiterate Lucien’s apparent “inferiority” to a literal torturer is all kinds of messed up. But consistently, Lucien’s heroism is seen as not enough for no other reason other than the fact the story wants us to perceive Rhys or Az as “better.” Lucien is presented as a perfect antithesis to Rhys–yet his sacrifices hold less weight.
We have Nehemia who is a better, more active leader—with magic and power of her own, is used only as a conduit to unlocking Dorian and Aelin’s power. Even without her death, Nehemia’s entire character is extremely racist. The story suggests that the only people able to “save the world,” are the people who spend the majority of their time ignoring the problems in the world. And it’s only through their bloodlines that they are deemed important–while Nehemia, who is the perfect leader, daughter, protector, etc., is killed off in order to awaken the potential of her white peers. Characters like Sorscha are used in a similar manner. Or we have Fenrys–who is canonically more like Aelin, and nicer, and willing to die for her–pushed to the side for Rowan for no other reason. We have Baxian–which I kind of rolled my eyes bc it was so damn obvious it played into this trope. The less attractive, scarred man who scar was dealt by the more conventionally attractive “gold-dusted-brown/ambiguous man” who follows him along like a lost puppy basically hailing his superiority. God, I’m pissed.
I encourage you guys to watch the video, though! It probably explained these things better than I can. I feel like later on I’ll be able to describe my thoughts more clearly but until then….
THIS. this is EVERYTHING.
i wanted to add to this by mentioning cresseida—in a/comaf, her character is introduced solely for the purpose of making f/eyre jealous and drawing out her “true feelings” for r/hys. cresseida is literally utilized to “push” r/hys and f/eyre closer together as they recognize that they want each other (whatever that means lawl).
much like tarquin, she does exactly three things upon meeting the nc: a) she flirts with r/hys, as f/eyre and tarquin do; b) she causes f/eyre to be jealous, as tarquin does with r/hys; and c) she is then rejected by r/hys, as tarquin is by f/eyre, because f/eyre is “better” than her and r/hys is “better” than tarquin (why this is, i couldn’t tell you).
f/eyre is who r/hys ultimately wants. cresseida was never actually in the running, and for s/jm to insert her character into the f/eysand dynamic just to further their relationship development and provide readers with “angst” is humiliating for cresseida (and for tarquin, who experiences this too) and continues to push the racist “poc love interests = less than white love interests/they’re disposable and non-serious love interests” trope.
after this short interaction where cresseida is given absolutely zero characterization, she’s basically forgotten for the rest of the books. i genuinely can’t remember another time she is mentioned or plays a pivotal role in the storyline (or really any role at all).
s/jm created her first black female character in the series and actually disposed of her. and she introduced this character in the second book, mind you, not the first, which features only one (1) distinct character of color that f/eyre actually interacts with—alis, who is literally a poc servant to f/eyre & tamlin. lucien’s ethnicity is retconned later in the books, so if you’re going off of only the first book, he’s technically featured as white in it. and let’s not even get into how the first black man introduced utm is killed off (by r/hysand, no less) after 2 seconds of page time (he’s also humiliated in front of everyone because he pees himself right before his death). and in that scene, r/hys is supposed to be a “secret good guy” because he kills him fast instead of slow and torturously.
please.
anyways, this kind of got a little rambly but i just wanted to add on to these great (and infuriating) points!
i genuinely cannot wrap my head around the fact that s/jm legitimately, with her whole heart, wrote the words “We reached the throne room, and I braced myself to be drugged and disgraced again” from feyre’s mouth, then turned around and decided yes, r/hysand should get with feyre after doing this to her.
i don’t ever wanna hear anyone call tamlin stans abuse apologists (which most of them are really not) if you’re not ready to acknowledge that s/jm is literally out here being an abuse apologist for r/hysand, consequently turning feyre into one as well.
even though i dislike feyre for her actions in a/cowar & a/cosf, i know she deserved so much better than what she got from a/cotar-a/comaf. my heart does honestly break for her, and for the way s/jm mishandled her character, her trauma, and her healing.
ik the asian manon fanart & danielle rose russell scandals have already come and gone, but i’ve been thinking a lot about the fandom’s different responses to them, and they really bother me.
it’s (for lack of a better word) interesting to me how nearly all of s/jm’s stans will body shame an actress (who hasn’t been confirmed as casted in or even affiliated with the upcoming adaptation) within an inch of her life when she’s not the size 0 skin and bones f/eyre is canonically described as in the beginning of a/cotar, but most won’t bat an eye when s/jm suddenly decides to depict manon, a character who is canonically described to be white throughout the entire series, as east asian in official fanart in a blatantly careless and lazy attempt at appeasing the readers seeking more diversity. the stans that did speak up about the wrongness of it were notably mainly poc, and i saw many of them either lose respect for s/jm or stop liking her entirely, which is completely understandable because she disrespected the asian and poc communities (both of which i am a part of) so why wouldn’t they lose respect for her? the ones that didn’t say a word, who were coincidentally also the ones that had a lot to say about danielle’s appearance, didn’t even really seem to recognize that what s/jm did to manon’s character was hurtful to these communities and just plain wrong.
so you’re telling me that the representation of f/eyre’s size (which changes drastically and constantly throughout the series and therefore can never be accurately depicted by one actress alone) is more of an issue to you than the representation of manon’s ethnicity, which is explicitly stated to be white but is being portrayed as non-white out of the blue, despite zero inclusion of this key aspect of her identity in the books? you’re telling me that it bothers you so damn much that danielle isn’t a stick figure like our flawless effortless humble beauty icon and kween f/eyre, but when s/jm essentially sends out the message that she views asian and white ethnicities as interchangeable you couldn’t care less?
if canon representation is so important to you that you can come for an actress just because she’s not the ideal weight you envisioned to play a fictional character, then i expect you to give that same energy to the author who suddenly switched up another fictional character’s entire ethnicity.
