#u said
“Running away from you takes time and pain
And I don’t even want to
So I’m gettin high all week without you
Popping pills, thinking about you”
Lil Peep - U said
The thing I dislike about a lot of the Discourse surrounding Eris is that I think people are a bit quick to say that he’s actually a good guy and he’s unfairly maligned by the other characters and the fandom…when he hasn’t done much to redeem himself/explain/apologize yet. The comparisons to Rhys (“if we can forgive Rhys why can’t we forgive Eris”) are a bit irritating to me because it always ignores that Rhys had his arc where he revealed what he had gone through, explained why he did what he did, and apologized/made up for his actions. And I think people see that and then say “well obviously Eris is actually a Good Guy too and that means the other characters hating him is unjustified!!” when Rhys and Eris are at very different points in their arcs. I mean, other characters hating Rhys, being afraid of him, and not trusting him was justified, even though we know what he was doing.
Obviously Eris has been abused, he’s been extremely unfortunate in the family he was born into, and there’s something under the surface. Right now he’s in the same place as Rhys in acotar. And Rhys was a “villain” in acotar! Feyre sensed there was more to him and he had ulterior motives for everything he was doing, but he was still doing bad things and the others were justified in their feelings towards him.
This isn’t to say that people can’t or shouldn’t like Eris! I think he’s interesting, I’m very curious about where sjm takes him, but I’m not going to sit here and say he’s done nothing wrong and he’s unfairly maligned. Because he’s not, and he has done bad things. It’s not surprising to me that the inner circle doesn’t like him because, regardless of his reasons and motivations, he did leave Mor bleeding out and dying in the woods. I don’t know why anyone would expect her to ever be okay with that, and considering the inner circle is her family, I don’t know why people expect them to be okay with Eris. I’m definitely intrigued by who he really is, but to me ignoring how terrible he has been and acting as if he’s already has a redemption arc is…not it.
