#fucksjm

Honestly? I completely agree and I don’t think it’s a hot take at all. Aelin’s arc looks like a growth journey on the surface, but when you dig into the details, her personality and mindset stay mostly the same from Throne of Glass to Kingdom of Ash.

In Book 1, Celaena is arrogant, self-absorbed, and constantly convinced she’s the smartest person in the room. Fast-forward to Book 7, and she’s still making major decisions behind everyone’s back (Empire of Storms), still expecting total loyalty without offering full honesty. She never really apologizes or learns from her mistakes and faces almost no real consequences. Instead, people end up admiring her for her sacrifices, as if that justifies the manipulation.

Characters who offer a different perspective and challenge her: like Chaol in Queen of Shadows or Lord Weylan Darrow in Empire of Storms, are portrayed as antagonistic or outright villainous and the books back her up instead of exploring their concerns seriously. It’s hard to call that "growth".

Even the trauma she suffers in Kingdom of Ash doesn’t lead to noticeable change in how she treats people or how she carries responsibility. Her self-sacrifice is framed as heroic, but it doesn’t come with emotional humility or a deeper shift in worldview. She’s still the same self-important, dramatic queen with a god complex, only now with a crown and a court that always validates her choices. There's little inner reflection or genuine vulnerability beyond surface-level trauma.

So yeah, she might change roles (from assassin to queen) and names (from Celaena to Aelin) but her mindset and attitude? Basically untouched.

Okay so no one ever talks about this but it needs to be said, Sarah J. Maas absolutely stole from The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. Like, it’s not even subtle she just straight up lifted entire plot devices, character archetypes, and worldbuilding elements and rewrote them in her "sexy fae trauma" aesthetic. Let’s start with the name Prydain = Prythian… my god, then Taran, the humble assistant pig-keeper (who happens to share the same name as her son 🤨) wants to be a hero, is basically the prototype for literally every SJM male lead all tortured, noble, burdened with power and identity issues. And don’t get me started on Eilonwy, who is the blueprint for Aelin, Feyre, Nesta sarcastic, magical girl with royal lineage, trauma, and a destiny she didn’t ask for. Hen Wen, the psychic pig who’s key to the fate of the world? She becomes a chimera or a talking cat or a sassy ancient being in SJM's books it’s the same archetype. And the Black Cauldron?? Literally THE SAME as the Cauldron in ACOTAR a dark magical object used to raise the dead, grant power, and tie fates together. The High Lord one of the books! Even the Horned King shows up again as a dozen different masked, deathless, evil overlords. It’s all there. SJM didn’t just take inspiration she looted Prydain for parts and then added wings and sex scenes. And people think it’s original? It’s middle grade fantasy in a new dress. Lloyd Alexander deserves more credit Prydain walked so SJM could make the Night Court brood in leather pants.

••••••

So this is a part of a story I was imagining and that has been hunting my brain until now that I finally put it down into words. I thought ‘what if someone from the Hewn City managed to escape and find herself at the Spring Court?’

So here you have it:

“You know I only saw them for a few nights only, after I…” Left? Vanished? Escaped. “The stars I mean. They didn’t look like this… They looked rather more bright. I suppose that is the charm of the Night Court…”

“You wish to go home.”

It comes out as a statement, not a question. One that has Vela look away from him and back at the sky. With bitterness and anger she replied to him:

“That was never my home. That was a prison. But still I find myself like… I yarn for a place I had never been before… the city of Starlight they call it; that where the High Lord and High Lady live. Why?”

“Why what?”

Silence. For a second there he thought she wouldn’t answer, then she turned to look at him again and could feel his heart torn to pieces at the tears in her eyes.

“Why wouldn’t they let us see it? Why wouldn’t they allow us the opportunity of this? Why keep it to themselves?”

Tamlin only looked at her. Unable to form an answer.

“I don’t know.”

That was all he could say before a tear rolled down her cheek. She wipes it from her face stubbornly before he could.

“You know I almost went back at first.” She said, and it feels like another blow. “When the morning came and I thought…”

“What?”

“I thought the sky had gone on fire…” she finishes, for a moment he doesn’t understand. “until of course I realised what was happening. The sun… it was coming up and down over the mountains I just… i didn’t...”

- He is a plot device, not a person in SJM’s eyes. Therefore, all the out of character shit he does means nothing because she simply needed to give the audience a reason to hate him. “I saw the red flags in book one-“ girl, he was a completely different person in book one. Every nuanced character will have some kind of red flag, but as far as an SJM character goes (she isn’t very good at writing nuanced characters), he’s a fairly good person.

- What Feyre does to him is 10x worse than what he does, and his actions are explained and justified. We’re supposed to hate the man who 100% believes whatever Feyre tells him wholeheartedly. We’re supposed to hate the man who’d go to hell and back to find her and bring her home safe. We’re supposed to hate the man who wanted to put both his court and Feyre over himself by trying to keep her safe inside when she was malnourished and in no position to leave home, while also trying to rebuild the home of fae refugees and lesser fae.

-This man, even in book three, talks about being against tyranny, wanting to help the lesser fae (and does, mind you) , and instead the audience is supposed to root for the guy who talks about saving lesser fae and condemns them nonetheless?

-Do I like what he did to Lucien? No. Do I recognize it was to make him into a villain? Yes.

-This man is a bard. Let him be a bard. He doesn’t want to rule, and it’s very obvious, yet he still does a stellar job. Compare that to Rhysand who clearly is on a power trip despite denying it.

-For some reason, book one is a Beauty and The Beast retelling. The “red flags” you’re seeing from Tamlin are the beast. Like literally. Like idk what to tell you, The Beast is The Beast, and that’s why he is the way he is. To add insult to injury, she’s trying to tell a piss poor version of The Ballad Of Tam Lin, so of course she’s going to ruin it.

-I like Tamlin to spite SJM fans. You all have poor taste in men and books, I’m sorry to break it to you.

And that’s the average experience with a SJM book.