CROCHAN HEIR

- R/hysand, a rape victim, sexually abused the girl he supposedly loved for his own personal gain

- R/hys also literally told F/eyre that he would have raped her if T/amlin hadn’t been in the way, not because he personally thinks rape is bad. Again, a rape survivor wanted to rape the person he loved

- F/eyre is forced to get so drunk she doesn’t remember anything, dance sexually, wear literal scraps of cloth, be painted everywhere on her body, and be paraded around for half of Prythian including her friend and boyfriend. Yet, even after all this, she forgives the man who made her do it and even falls in love with him. Not to mention, in a.cofas R/hys confesses to have spied on her through the tattoo whenever he pleased (and we know he’s a creep so who knows what he was watching)

- R/hys hates A/marantha’s guts because she raped him for 50 years. He’s still being slut-shamed, but he didn’t even apologize to his mate who he supposedly loves more than life. Even though he knows how it feels, he slut-shames N/esta

- F/eyre hates T/amlin and made him pay for abusing her, but just brushes off R/hys’ abuse. I am in no way a T/amlin apologist, but he acted out of love, at least (doesn’t excuse him being a piece of shit), R/hys abused F/eyre so he could go home without one thought of the woman he was hurting. F/eyre stil hates T/amlin and loves R/hys simply because Mess wanted to

- In real life how likely do you think it is for a sexual assault victim to love and forgive her abuser? How likely is it for a rape victim to sexually abuse a woman and threaten to rape her while he is still being raped every night? Would stans think a relationship between someone and their abuser was cute if it happened in real life?

k so I don’t talk much about ACOTAR on this blog, at least not in my own posts, but let me make something very clear - I think ACOTAR is a million times worse than TOG. Like, TOG is almost so bad it’s good. ACOTAR is.. not.

But I’m not here to bitch about ACOTAR in general, I’m here to bitch about a very specific thing in ACOTAR - the fact that it has an inherently flawed concept and breaks basically all the rules of retellings. ACOTAR is meant to be, and was marketed as, a Beauty and the Beast retelling. The entire series is referred to as a Beauty and the Beast retelling. Over the course of ACOTAR and ACOMAF, we cycle through three different fairytales/myths - Beauty and the Beast, Eros and Psyche, and Hades and Persephone. This is not how you write a retelling.

And this might’ve been solved had it, y'know, been marketed as an Eros and Psyche retelling. It’s not as if people wouldn’t have bought it; this is SJM we’re talking about, people will buy literally anything she puts out (for exhibit a of ‘SJM stans will take anything’, allow me to direct you to: the entirety of ACOFAS). But, instead, it was labeled as a Beauty and the Beast retelling for.. some reason? The thing with ACOTAR is that the first half works decently as a BATB retelling, and the second half goes straight into Eros and Psyche and never looks back.

For reference: the myth of Eros and Psyche follows the story of the Greek princess Psyche as she marries the god Eros, who had fallen deeply in love with her. However, Eros appears invisible to her, and thus Psyche doesn’t know the identity of her husband. When her sisters come and convince her to sneak up on Eros as he sleeps and uncover his true identity, Psyche does so, but burns Eros when hot oil from her lamp falls upon his flesh. Eros flees, and his mother Aphrodite tells Psyche that she can have her husband back if she completes several tasks. During the last task, Aphrodite sends Psyche to the underworld in order to obtain some of Persephone’s beauty for herself. Persephone gives Psyche a closed box and instructs her not to open it, however Psyche does anyway, and as it turns out all that was inside the box was murder. Psyche dies, but Eros rescues her and brings her back to life, then turns her into a god.

Sounds a lot like ACOTAR, doesn’t it? ACOTAR awkwardly flips between BATB and E&P, which makes the story almost feel disjointed. The plot matches that of E&P, but the motifs, recurring themes, and backstory all match BATB. Needless to say, this was a stupid decision which weakens ACOTAR as a novel. But then we get to ACOMAF and we switch myths yet again, this time to Hades and Persephone. There is nothing more I hate in retellings then when the same characters represent different archetypes. Apparently Feyre is not only Beauty, but also Psyche and Persephone at the same time. Tamlin is not only the beast, he’s also Eros and.. Demeter? In ACOMAF, Tamlin suddenly takes on the role of Demeter for some reason, because there’s literally no other character he could be. Rhysand is the only character with a consistent analogue (Hades) and that’s only because he comes strutting in out of nowhere in ACOTAR and only gets actual development in ACOMAF.

In ACOWAR, SJM drops the retelling aspect entirely to have a more ‘thrilling’ conclusion. The law of threes is a thing. If ACOWAR was also a retelling, it wouldn’t have fixed the problem, but it at least would have been somewhat consistent. And yet, it’s not. It’s your generic final battle conclusion story. The overarching narrative feels lopsided and unbalanced because of it.

Now, you could argue that Hades and Persephone is technically the progenitor of stories like BATB and E&P, and this is true. However, in their current incarnations, these stories are so fundamentally different that you can’t retell all of them at once. You can’t make a Snow White retelling into a Sleeping Beauty one at the last second just because both of the heroines are asleep for most of the third act. They are different stories, with different implications and motifs. If you want to retell Beauty and the Beast, retell Beauty and the Beast. If you want to retell Eros and Psyche, retell Eros and Psyche. And if you want to retell Hades and Persephone, retell Hades and Persephone for god’s sake. Pick one and do the best you can within the parameters of that story.

Yes! It’s honestly amazing how SJ/M tricked her fandom into thinking a mediocre character has a lot of depth when she just gets flatter and more deplorable in every book. Faerug was never anything special, but I also didn’t really understand the extreme aversion to her when AC0TAR first came out. But AC0MAF changed my opinion as well.

Here’s my understanding of the differently characterized Faerugs, or rather the Faerug Construct because she constantly changes for the plot and has very little personality. Spoilers through AC0WAR, if you’re worried about that, anon!

AC0TAR: lazily written, unrealistically good at painting and hunting, but not trying to purport that she’s perfect and amazing. TAR!Faerug has flaws that make sense. She’s stupid because she had little formal education and because the plot required her to be. Education =/= wisdom/intelligence, but it does help improve a person’s factual knowledge and decision-making process, and Faerug is lacking in both those respects. She is stubborn, spiteful, and overly curious because she has no exposure to the fae world, so her bad decisions are somewhat believable.

AC0MAF: literally no flaws. She has never done anything wrong in her life, ever. F.eysand banter dominates the book, but there is no tension because we know they’re going to get together, they agree on everything, and both characters are flat. She doesn’t pay attention to fae culture or politics even though they are about to fight a war, and doesn’t care about characters around her except for when it concerns shipping M0riel, El/ucien, or N/essian. Faerug’s every thought is dedicated to making the N.ight Court seem like cute, funny woobies when they’re mostly privileged, stupid assholes. She rarely thinks of her L.ucien or her family except to blame them for things that aren’t their fault or just as bad as stuff she’s done. She and Rice act like entitled pieces of shit (forcing themselves into N/esta and E/lain’s house, breaking Keir’s arm, stealing the Orb and the Book, hiding important info from their Court, etc) and expect people to like them.

AC0WAR: again, no flaws. Rice is given a flaw: being TOO SELFLESS!!!!! Poor Rice :(. Rice needs WAR!Faerug to sabotage the Spring Court, so she is ON IT. This iteration of Faerug is the BEST politician, despite having no skill set or character development to support it. She’s SO clever and sneaky, she can fool everyone in the Spring Court into loving her instead of Tom by performing maybe three publicity stunts. It doesn’t matter that she gets a sentry gets whipped or that she sexually and mentally harasses r*pe survivor L.ucien. Faerug forces M0r to come out because she ships her with Assriel. She does nothing when Rice exposes M0r to her abusers or when T.arquin murders an entire H.ybern legion. Deep down, however, she is a great person, quite possibly the best, kindest, most selfless fae to ever walk the earth. I/anthe and the King of H.ybern, on the other hand, are Horrible, so they get their due.

It should surprise no one that this led me to think about Throne of Glass, my eternal nemesis. (As a side note, I am fed up with series’ names being the same as the first book in the series)

SO ANYWAY.

Throne of Glass titles, and why they aren’t great.

Amren aka the angry snowball

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you..”

cobra starship

neon trees

metro station

3OH3

taio cruz

owl city

far east movement

ne-yo

onerepublic

He’s the King of Adarlan.

He can handle himself in a sword fight.

Sure, he doesn’t gut people for a living, but A//elin has no right to treat him like an inadequate child.

The only thing I remember is that magic kinda smells like metal in ACOTAR?

But like … does she ever explain what it feels like to do magic? That’s like the most basic thing. What does it feel like? How do you do magic? Do you think it and it just happens like bending your finger? What’s the source of the magic? Are there spells you have to cast? Enchantments? Incantations?

Are some abilities valued above others? Are some abilities granted to all Fae while others are more exclusive? Are they hereditary? Do you have to learn how to use it or is it just natural? What determines what kind of magical abilities you get? Personality? Proving your worth?

What are the limits????

If you can influence your environment, what’s the radius? What determines how far your magic can reach? What if someone else with similar powers tries to control the same part of the environment as you, what determines who’s more powerful? What if someone with the opposite powers tries to counter you, does it matter which element goes against which or is it all based on power or skill?

Can other creatures have magic too? What kind of magic do they have? Is it similar to the Fae magic, or is it different, and if so, why and how? Do they draw their magic from different sources? If it’s the same source, are the magic types different? If there are different sources, can they share them or produce similar effects?

Are there magical objects? How does one create a magical object? Can you infuse something with magic? From what source would you draw the magic to infuse the object with and how would you do that?

Can you create new spells? Are there ways of learning the different types of magic and combining them in new ways? Is it possible to create new types of magic by figuring out new ways to use your abilities?

Is there a limit to how much magic you can do? Do you have a “mana pool” of sorts? Can you train to improve your magic stamina? Can you do too much magic and exhaust yourself? Do you have to rest? What determines how much magic you can use per day? Are some types of magic more exhausting than others?

(SO I started answering this but it turned into somewhere to paste all my views and theories about the Havilliards hahahaha)

Hmmm idk but I’ve never really believed any theories about Dorian’s parents being anyone other than the King and Queen for a few reasons: 

You can’t really dupe everyone in regards to the mother. Like the Queen can’t just show up one day and be like “hey this is my son” because everyone will be like “lol nope, you weren’t pregnant”, unless there is some sort of elaborate scheme to swap newborns 

I’m probably the only person in the entire fandom who thinks this, but you know that scene in QOS where the King is revealed, like the real King beneath the valg and we realise that this entire time he had been controlled and had used whatever independence he had to shield Dorian. Well… at that point I honestly forgave him for everything. I was crying at the fact that he had tried his hardest to save baby Dorian and this is probably just because I love Dorian so much and would protect him with my life, but I forgave him. ANYWAY, as a King he would have wanted his real heir to continue the line. And also the King of Adarlan was quite powerful so i reckon his power went to Dorian

Maybe, maybe there is some aspect in Valg in Dorian (not quite sure what happens when you have sex with a valg inhabited human). I feel like Hollin is definitely the product of valg inhabited human x human but another unpopular opinion, I really don’t like the #killHollin2k17 tag and its variations. Yeah he’s absolutely horrific but he is an 11 year old boy. Many of our faves have done things just as bad and they are fully fledged adults who get easily forgiven. I just think its a bit unfair (another side note: yeah Hollin is probs a Havilliard but there’s nothing to suggest he has magic yet so he can’t forge the lock regardless??)

Also I think it’s a bit late in the game for Dorian’s real heritage to be revealed? Like we only have one book left and honestly it would cause a mess because as (1) some random kid made a prince or (2) an illegitimate child; he will be ineligible for the throne

I also feel like my entire view is based on the fact that so much of Dorian’s character and my love of him derives from his status as a prince and later King who just wants to do what’s best for his people. And who has turned into such a good man despite what he faced. And having his title taken away would devastate me and i’m sure it would devastate him