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.
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.
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
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
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.
