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.
People act like Nesta is like ten years older than F.eyre. She’s only three years older. Elain is only two. F.eyre, Nesta, and Elain were all children/teenagers during their years of poverty. Nesta is being blamed for being…a child. People act like she’s a psychopath and not a physically and mentally abused childduring those years. Like she never forced F.eyre to do anything. F.eyre made those decisions herself. F.eyre chose to go in the forest, no one let her — she went. She has always had the choice to just not hunt. Like I feel like people blame Nesta and Elain for F.eyre’s decisions! They were all teenagers, they were all victims — Nesta even more so when the were in wealth.
TW: SA
THIS !!! also nesta sitting there waiting for her dad to get his act together instead of bailing them out is genuinely what i think i would do in that situation
like he was the parent?? why should his minor daughters fix a problem that he created? why did he leave his youngest daughter in a position where she had to become the sole breadwinner?
idc about his disability nothing happened to his brain he still knew how to train and had some useable skills. feyre going to the forest gave their dad an excuse to do nothing and sit back while his daughter did it all and neither nesta nor elain forced her to make that decision.
it’s not nesta’s fault that she chose to leave her dad to fix his own wrongdoings and get his shit together. plus it literally said in acosf when she finally realised that he wasn’t going to do anything she tried to find her own way of helping (marriage) but then she got sexually assualted and feyre had started hunting by then anyway.
was nesta kind of a bitch in acotar? yes, but that was normal sibling shit; not abuse or anything that actually warranted a redemption arc. rhysand and the inner circle had no right to treat her the way they did for how she dealt with a situation that they could never even imagine (esp after all the trauma she had faced before then).
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
Azriel believes himself to be entitled to Elain. He believes he deserves her simply because he decided he wants her. He is willing to murder her mate, despite knowing it would still have a devastating impact on her due to the bond. He’s willing to break several alliances Night has with multiple courts. His narrative said nothing of longing, nothing of his heart aching for her. It was all about what he wanted to do to her sexually, how he pleasured himself to her. Going by his narrative, Elain is an object he wants to fuck and quite frankly that’s disgusting behavior.
Lucien, her mate, and therefore by Prythian Law, is entitled to her. But he does not believe he’s entitled to her. He does not assume he deserves her just because he wants her. He has shown interest in getting to know her as a person. He respects her boundaries despite how much it hurts him. He longs for her, he wants her to heal. He has shown that he cares for her autonomy, he doesn’t want her to feel forced into anything. Even when Feyre invaded his mind, there was nothing sexual about his thought process towards Elain. His mind was riddled with guilt, sadness, and longing.
Everything Elriel stans have falsely accused Lucien of doing, Azriel actually did in nine measly pages. I don’t want to hear shit anymore.
i like to think that the whole a//cotar saga really does try to put girls in power but then a/cosf comes through and it’s like. so nesta, human girl given no choice before being thrown into the cauldron, gets super scary powers that forces people to respect her and her choices, right? yes good fine. nesta then hates the powers and the inner circle chooses to lock her into a babysitting schedule in fear of her losing control of said powers. sure. hate it, but whatever, maybe it will get better. then nesta uses the powers to give magic swords on a whole new level of power to the man who forced her into said babysitting? said swords will give that man the power to become high king? and then losessaid powers????
like, as much as i truly would like to believe s//jm is trying it just… it just says something when all her powerful girls only exist to be a love interest, and when the non-love interests to mister rice end up using their powers for him. or when said powers only really benefit mister rice, bad boy extreme. and then when they lose their powers anyways.
“It[the Cauldron] wanted those weapons Made, and thus they were Made. It wanted Rhysand to have the and thus the blacksmith brought them to you. To you, Rhysand, not to Nesta.” like PLEASE so translation, “the cauldron was using nesta and it gave her super badass powers… but only so u could get the new version of the treasure chest, rhysie. because you’re special and the entire world conspired to make you high king, what a boss.” like WHAT NO
this is such bullshit. of course the fucking Maker Of The World wants rice to have all this bullshit magic stuff. wouldn’t be an s//jm book without our main man being Cosmically Ordained to be high king whatever the fuck.
Girl needs to look into why her husband feels the need to knock her down in front of people and talk shit about her family. Does he regret making her High Lady and his supposed equal? Does he just need the power trip? I just don’t get it.
Rhys wasn’t my favorite in the trilogy but he’s gotten worse and worse since dying, I swear. He’s an absolute shitstain— even to Feyre.
i’m so tired of characters acting like amren is the most terrifying thing. like, ricedick threatens to lock lucien in a room with amren if he breaks any of their rules, and i’m like??? tf??? what’s amren gonna do?? she’s just an annoying, bland dipshit.
i love how she was so hyped up just to do nothing. sj/m has the characters tell scary legends about her, like when rice mentioned that she used to be part of the “Prison” (another super ScArY ePiC part of the acotar universe), or how she used to have some terrifying physical form, but you never see her doing anything actually interesting or cool in action. like yeah in acowar she turned into…. a ball of light… but the way the characters talk about it you’d think she was a god or something.
my day? ruined. my crops? dead. my will to live? rapidly depleting.
This is,,,,not okay. I honest to god just had a conversation with my sister about Maas’s books not being age appropriate for kids aged 14 and up, but to label this shit as consumable material for kids as young as 7??? Gorl-
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.
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.
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 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.
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
One of the things that bothered me in ACOSF was when Cassian basically told Nesta “you wanna take 10 years? Take 10 years hell take 20” but like…sis yall didnt even give her one
I need a straightforward reason from Elain haters why they actually hate Elain!!
Cause I, can’t find one logical explanation for all this hate!
1. They can’t hate on Nesta anymore
2. They ship Azriel with someone else
2.5 coz poor Lucien for some reason
3. They finally realize how she failed her sisters in many ways too and for the longest time Nesta (or Feyre) is the only one getting blamed while Elain gets away with everything coz she’s nice and quiet and she’s being held accountable now (I fall into this camp and IMO the only valid reason to criticize Elain on)
nah before acosf we knew nothing about her, she barely had any lines or appearances in the books so we couldn’t really judge her on her motives. everyone was indifferent to elain until acosf
her treatment towards nesta was gross— nesta made sure elain had the time and the space to grieve UNBOTHERED to then spit on nesta for falling apart?? THEN HOMEGIRL punishing nesta b/c she supposedly co-opted her trauma when in reality elains suffering is one of nesta’s triggers. yet no one understood that?? elain deserved that loyal dog comment and much more. where tf was elains loyalty???? what’s even worse is the sjm isn’t even going to ADDDRESS this in the following books.
apparently only nesta can be held accountable for her actions. god this book makes it so hard to re read
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
