nesta archeron deserved better

Beware of the woods and the dark, dank deep. He’ll follow you home, and he won’t let you sleep.

C/alanmai.

I'd like to make it clear before we begin:

What happened on C/alanmai was sexual assault.

There. I said it. I expect the stans and their flying monkeys momentarily.

All book quotes are from chapters 21 and 22 of A/COTAR.

Now, in the book, C/alanmai is supposed to signal the start of spring and "restore the magic of [P/rythian]" But Roselin Productions so eloquently called it a faerie orgy, so that is how I'll describe "Fire Night" from here onwards.

Also C/alanmai is a real May Day festival in Wales. It is mostly referred to as Calan Mai, the "Calend (first day) of May"or Calan Haf, the "Calend of Summer".

Quote from a BBC article about Calan Mai:

'Spirit nights', or ysprydnos, took place on May Eve. It was one of the three nights in the year when the world of the supernatural was closest to the the real world. 

Other than this, it appears that the true Calan Mai is not dissimilar to other May Day celebrations across Europe.

No sex to be seen.

So S/jm plucked up a Welsh holiday, removed the space between the words, reduced it to a faerie orgy for her YA book?? Ew.

Anyway, onto the meat of my problem.

F/eyre is warned multiple times by both L/ucien and T/amlin about C/alanmai. When she bugs him enough, L/ucien finally explains everything.

“Fire Night signals the official start of spring— in P/rythian, as well as in the mortal world,” L/ucien said. While his words were calm, they trembled slightly. I leaned against the wall of the hallway, forcing myself into a casualness I didn’t feel. “Here, our crops depend upon the magic we regenerate on C/alanmai— tonight.”

“Tonight, T/am will allow … great and terrible magic to enter his body,” L/ucien said, staring at the distant fires. “The magic will seize control of his mind, his body, his soul, and turn him into the Hunter. It will fill him with his sole purpose: to find the Maiden. From their coupling, magic will be released and spread to the earth, where it will regenerate life for a year to come.”

He also explicitly tells her that if she were to go to the orgy, T/amlin will choose her as "the Maiden", but “it wouldn’t have been T/amlin who brought [her] into that cave.”

After L/ucien infodumps this, F/eyre's reaction is:

It made me sick— the thought of T/amlin forcing me, that magic could strip away any sense of self, of right or wrong. But hearing that … that some feral part of him wanted me … My breath was painful.

Now, I don't know about you, but if I was told that if I went to a faerie orgy, being told to my face that the man I like could very well force me into having sex with him if I show up, I might decide to listen to L/ucien and stay in my room.

But F/eyre refuses to listen to the warnings and goes anyway. She is found by T/amlin. He grabs her, and she tells him to let her go. But he doesn't.

He grabbed my hands again and bit my neck. I cried out as his teeth clamped onto the tender spot where my neck met my shoulder.

I couldn’t move— couldn’t think, and my world narrowed to the feeling of his lips and teeth against my skin. He didn’t pierce my flesh, but rather bit to keep me pinned. The push of his body against mine, the hard and the soft, made me see red— see lightning, made me grind my hips against his. I should hate him— hate him for his stupid ritual, for the female he’d been with tonight …

His bite lightened, and his tongue caressed the places his teeth had been. He didn’t move— he just remained in that spot, kissing my neck. Intently, territorially, lazily. Heat pounded between my legs, and as he ground his body against me, against every aching spot, a moan slipped past my lips.

Despite being told no, T/amlin bites F/eyre, and she bluntly says she should hate him for what he's doing. Despite her body's reactions, F/eyre clearly has not consented. She told him no, and never said anything else. Also T/amlin forced her to engage even though she didn't want to.

This was where I stopped reading; having a sexual assault scene in a book between the main character and the love interest just left a horrid taste in my mouth.

In the next chapter, which takes place the next day, F/eyre gets this reaction to (rightly) calling T/amlin out:

“While I might not have been myself, L/ucien and I both told you to stay in your room,” T/amlin said, so calmly that I wanted to rip out my hair.

I couldn’t help it. Didn’t even try to fight the red-hot temper that razed my senses. “Faerie pig!” I yelled, and L/ucien howled, almost tipping back in his chair. At the sight of T/amlin’s growing smile, I left.

me:

When I started to have a real problem with cresswell being a thing is when Thorne started to become sexually interested in her, when he thought that she had great legs and that whole makeout scene in Winter that was far too steamy for a 16 year old and a 20 year old.

I don't think we can deny that relationships like that happen in real life (16 yo with a 20 yo) because they do. My mom and dad were 15 and 19 when my mom got pregnant with me, so trust me when I say I know about this shit better than most people. But just because they happen doesn't make them okay or healthy. And just because they happen doesn't mean we should romanticize them. Thinking that Cress and Thorne are as old as my parents were when I was born honestly makes me sick to my stomach because being 16 and 20 is just inherently a terrible age to be un a relationship.

And their relationship isnt just unhealthy because of the age gap, because it's between a minor and an adult. Because technically Cinder and Kai is a relationship between a minor and an adult and technically Scarlet and Wolf have a larger age gape between them than Cress and Thorne.

The bathtub scene.

But is that what we want to teach young girls?

Do we want to teach them that they're not allowed to have any form of privacy no matter what the circumstances are?

Do we want to teach them that they should grin and bear things that make them uncomfortable?

Do we want to teach them that anything romantic that happened between Cress and Thorne is healthy?

Girls deserve privacy.

Girls should not be forced to pretend to be comfortable with something when they're not.

Girls should not be taught that this type of relationship is good, okay, and acceptable.

and kinda uncomfortable age gaps are pretty common in marissa meyer’s books. nova and adrian from the renegades trilogy are 16 and 18. cath and jest from heartless were around 17 and 20 (plus, it always made me rlly uncomfortable how attracted the king was to cath... i know it’s set in a time where relationships like that were common, but that doesn’t make it healthy). i don’t remember how old the other tlc characters were but there definitely were some more uncomfortable age gaps.

@booksociety’s Love is in the Air event: An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson

“What are you doing?” I asked. “You can’t sleep here.”

“Yes, I can. In fact, I must. I can’t let any harm befall you, so it’s best I stay close.”

“You could offer to sleep on the floor, like a gentleman.”

He appeared horrified by the suggestion.

“And I’m not certain you’re in any state to protect me,” I went on, sensing a lost cause. “Just now you were almost assassinated by a teapot.”

I try to recognize that the author herself was raised in conservative Mormonism and that’s where she’s coming from and that sort of thing can mess you up (especially after a couple of discussions with people who managed to Get Out Of That Business) but then we have the non Mormon publishers, the non Mormon marketers, and the non Mormon fans who have no excuse for looking at this and saying ‘yeah these are great messages! Especially for teenaged girls!’

My distaste for the author is considerably less than my distaste and outright fury at the people who took a book with clear abuse apologism, racism, and child grooming, decided there was nothing wrong with it, and have now decided that really the only thing people had a problem with was that it was liked by teenaged girls.

Honestly, would I hate it less if it was marketed to a different audience? Yes. But it’s not because teenaged girls like it. It’s because this is what people think teenaged girls SHOULD like.

god, is she seriously pulling the “never heard of you” shtick? you’re not that big an author, Lee, grow the fuck up

*cracks knuckles* all right, let’s go

Hunt: is constantly sexualized, constantly lusts after Bruce, a white woman who treats him abominably, is a fucking slave.

Fury: she’s not complex. we barely know her, and all we know about her is that she might be gay (since sj///m is allergic to that word, it’s not fully clear) and that she kills people. that’s it.

Juniper: is fetishized, is black but also a faun, thus contributing to the black characters being animalistic problem, and all we know about her is that she likes to dance

Isaiah: his one defining character trait is that he’s gay. he’s pretty flat on the whole, though i will admit i like him more than most other characters in the book

Randall: he’s not a bad character at all, and we actually learn a bit about his backstory, but he’s still a very small secondary character

Naomi: who? nah, i know she’s in the triarii but she’s essentially killed and doomed to live in a box at the bottom of a trench for the rest of time. here’s hoping Hunt rescues her.

Hypaxia: i don’t have much to complain about with her bc she was interesting, but she’s also a Manon copycat

Declan: we barely know him. he’s a frat boy who likes to party. yes i like him more than most other characters, and i do love he grabbed his laptop to protect it when Hunt killed Sandriel, but we still barely know him

the Viper Queen: she’s a villain who runs the Mear Market, aka sells humans for sex. fuck off with your praise.

casual mentions: bite me.

Hunt, whose identity is “not defined by being a POC”: yeah, well, that’s because it’s tacked on and left so ambiguous as to be meaningless. Also, he’s literally a slave and there’s an entire conversation in which this book brags about how much he cost.

(I fucking DARE YOU to tell me SJM spoke to a single POC while writing this book, after that)

Fury and Juniper: respectively, fit into the “emotionless, standoffish asian” and “animalistic black person” stereotypes. We get all of three sentences of semi-confirmation they’re in a relationship, that’s nearly as cagey as the shit Disney keeps patting itself on the back for. It’s barely a step up from queerbaiting, and does not deserve a modicum of credit as “good queer rep” ffs

Isaiah: yeah literally his only character traits are “gay”, “hot”, and “why is he the leader instead of Hunt when Hunt is so much more powerful.” He’s also used as a POV character early in the book as a lens for us to meet Hunt, and to tell us how hot Hunt is. Because he’s gay!

Randall Silago: A bit character. I like this one, but I’m pissed that his brownness has led some stans to say Bryce is “Hispanic/Latinx coded.” Lol. No. Go away. Don’t give credit where none is due.

Naomi (OP calls her the “wraith”): pretty sure the Wraith was actually Viktoria? You know, that character who barely had a role in the plot and then was brutally punished to fuel the male protagonist’s angst?

Hypaxia: She’s fine I guess?

Declan: Sure, he’s fine too. 

The Viper Queen: I don’t recall her being described as having “east asian features”, and I’m a little disturbed OP does, because this character is literally a Dragon Lady stereotype. 

Casual Mentions: AHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA you cannot be fucking serious. 

Sooooo out of a massive cast there’s this handful of queer/POC characters, plus those much-lauded “casual mentions”, and only like, four, are not inherently problematic. Why are people acting like this deserves a standing ovation?

A stan friend of mine recently informed me “there’s much more body diversity” in this book, so let’s examine that, too. I cannot think of a single male character who isn’t described as a gorgeous hunk of muscle, and the only female character described as anything other than thin (Lehabah), gets killed off to save Bryce. Also, she was a slave. 

(don’t come at me with “Bryce is plus size.” She’s explicitly described as “tall and lanky”, “heavier than she looks” (in text, this is due to muscle), just with big boobs and an ass. Guys, that’s not a perfect body type for ballet, but it’s still a body type our society puts on a pedestal. There’s nothing groundbreaking here.)

Finally, regarding the whole “alphaholes” thing y’all seem to think is so damn subversive:

The thing is, I really believe SJM tried with this book. I really believe this is her idea of a herculean effort at quality representation, and it feels like there’s someone holding a fucking gun to her head to get her to do it. I don’t think it’s malicious, but it is ignorant, and demonstrates a frankly obscenely privileged and sheltered perspective.

I’m really disappointed in all of you who think this book does anything beyond the bare minimum, who see nothing wrong with the way LGBT/POC folks are portrayed in SJM’s books. Who come at me RECOMMENDING this insulting bullshit, because it’s actually that groundbreaking to you.