Fairy Floss

Tamlin is abusive. The narrative is very clear about that, and it’s right to be. His overprotection, emotional withdrawal, refusal to communicate, and locking Feyre inside the manor are judged using modern, real-world standards about autonomy and harm. And that’s actually a good move. ACOTAR deliberately tells readers that fantasy romance doesn’t excuse abusive boyfriend behavior. Intent doesn’t erase impact. Control is still control.

What matters is that, by YA fantasy standards, Tamlin’s actions are not especially extreme. This archetype exists everywhere in the genre. What condemns him is not genre logic, but real-world logic. By those standards, he is abusive. Full stop.

And once the story introduces that lens, readers cannot just turn it off.

Because Rhysand doesn’t exist in a vacuum. He enters the story because Tamlin fails under real-world standards. That context is what makes Rhys the “better option” in the first place. So the moment readers are told to stop applying those same standards to Rhys, the narrative breaks its own rules.

Especially when we’re asked to ignore what Rhys actually does.

In book one, Rhys sexually assaults Feyre. He drugs her, strips her of agency, and uses her body as a political tool under the mountain. The narrative later reframes this as sacrifice and protection, but under the same real-world framework used to judge Tamlin, that behavior does not become acceptable just because the perpetrator is charming or tortured.

Later, Rhys deliberately sends Feyre to face the Weaver — a death god no one has ever survived — not to save the court, not to stop a war, but to retrieve his mother’s ring. A sentimental object. Something with emotional value to him. Feyre’s life is placed at extreme risk to satisfy Rhysand's emotions, and the story frames this as trust and romance. Under real-world standards, that’s reckless endangerment. The standards don’t change just because Feyre lives.

And this isn’t limited to romance.

As a ruler, Rhys writes off the entire Hewn City as irredeemably evil, forbids its people from leaving, and condemns an entire population to misery based on collective moral judgment. Once readers are operating under real-world logic, the idea that a whole city is just “evil” stops being morally coherent. That’s fairy-tale simplification — and ACOTAR already told us it wasn’t playing by fairy-tale rules when it took abuse seriously.

The same applies to Illyria. Rhys conscripts Illyrian boys at around eight years old into brutal military training camps, where he himself admits that punishments are so severe that “three lashes are practically encouragement to do more.” This is justified in-text with “it’s their culture.” But once the story has trained readers to evaluate harm realistically, cultural framing doesn’t erase systemic abuse. Readers don’t stop noticing child militarization just because the narrative shrugs and moves on.

Cover your drinks y’all, the rhy/s stans are walking around

i always assumed very similarly to you anon. like rhysand "just showing up didn't" surprise me because i think she's said it before, but i always kind of assumed that the early draft of acotar was changed and she added scenes like the calanmai neck bite to show red flags or pivoted in that direction entirely as soon as she realized she wanted rhys to be the real love interest.

"he can be abusive without her having to rewrite those things, without having been abusive in all ways, he can be a good high lord and abusive boyfriend and that she decided to rewrite it at all makes me think somewhere she thinks these things can't exist simultaneously which is a rather gross way to think about abuse." yeah i wonder if that was her trying to overcorrect to really hammer the audience over the head with the fact that tamlin is abusive ? and yes i agree, it does come across a little since there isn't a whole lot of evidence for that in acotar. although i guess you could say that tamlin waiting for years "sitting around" is proof of him being a bad high lord, but ehh he did try to send out sentries, but it was just a losing game until feyre. it's hard to know i think, because feyre is only privy to so much in acotar, and then an entire third of the book is utm. is it said in acomaf or acotar that tamlin didn't want to be high lord and had no desire until it was forced upon him? it would make sense for him, as the youngest, to not be ambitious to rule (and why would he want that really when his father and brothers were all alive), but i guess you could interpret that as him being unsatisfied with ruling over the spring court in general ? however, that is doing a lot of heavy lifting for sjm, and i do think she just kind of did what felt right in the moment to suit the narrative of acomaf regardless of her intentions of his characterizations in the og book. i do agree, it's a shallow way to look at abuse because oftentimes abusers are great at their jobs, are incredibly charming, and well-liked. and just making tamlin a ruler who doesn't care about his people suffering (like the tithe) is boring. and there is a way to explore how power corrupts but sjm is not interested in that narratively at all. in fact, she really has no problem acting like being a ruler is the most important goal for all her characters. and it all feels walked back a bit by the time we get to acowar and it does appear as if tamlin cares about his court and the good of its people. and then in acofas he appears very distressed, not just because of losing feyre, but because his court is in ruins.

"I also feel just stupid af for trying to make sense of all of that using Feyre missing the red flags narrative when there were blatant mismatches that made no sense, that didn't even need to be there and were only there because her own understanding of abuse is shallow." yeah i feel like if i wanted everything in canon to make sense, i could still view that as my ultimate reading, and i mostly believe what i wrote here about feyre's journey and how acotar showcases a young girl who falls in love with someone for the first time and suffers abuse under the hands of him. however, i do question how intentional that aspect is as well and i do believe that sjm just kind of wrote whatever to suit what she needed to convey in the story. like i think she failed in establishing feylin's connection, it still surprises me that they barely had any lengthy conversations in acotar, and her conversations and interactions with rhys do show that she was purposefully planting the seeds of feysand's connection. i do believe that still!

i do agree with you that she has a very shallow view on abuse. and i have such an issue with "too much love can be suffocating" as well for that exact reason!!! because it's not about if the abuser loved their victim at all in these cases, but is about control, like you said.

and i also feel like it was a waste to even try to make sense of acotar's narrative in a lot of ways, because obviously the author has such a minimal amount of respect for their work/characters/craft while also thinking quite highly of herself, her writing, and her supposed feminism. like i never thought sjm was particularly talented and i didn't think she was a good person, but i thought she at least respected her characters and the story she was trying to convey.

"And I tried to give Rhysand this complex morality and untangled his decisions as coming from a place where he can't do anything about certain things etc and it turns out hc just exists because he was originally being written as this bad guy who wasn't that bad and was undercover against this common enemy and then when she made him good, she put no thought into what anything implies with Mor's cousins etc and was just smoothly saying see this is a great decision on his part, good guy Rhys. She doesn't think any women are being sacrificed for this happen at all, the only sacrifice to her is on his part that he's having to have this cruel image. As a good thing, this has freed me to write Rhysand as I want, all characters as I want really because these things I was trying to grapple with, measure as how right, how wrong, reasons etc all just exist on this woman's whim and she doesn't think at all."

no the con stuff is soooo strange to me and i always thought sjm kind of doesn't care, that's why (no offense to the people who actually TRIED to make sense of this part of acotar, because i truly get it and you are smarter than the author lol) everytime i would see antis talk about con/mor's cousins and use that as a reason that rhys is the worst and hates women i'd roll my eyes a bit because i had the feeling sjm was not thinking about it deeply at all. i just had the feeling she meant to write all of those characters and that situation extremely flatly, and it is indeed extremely lazy, and people have the right to still criticize rhys for it but i just thought it's a bit of a waste of time to use it as evidence of rhys being evil because sjm put such little care into that.

and it astounds me a bit at how okay she is with her laziness and low effort because she seemed to think very highly of herself about making all of her series be interconnected during the chd podcast "oh i have NO IDEA how i did it!" like please girl you haven't given most of your secondary characters a first name and you think you are so influenced by tolkein? anyways let me get back to the subject before i get mad about that again...

yeah it totally is just about rhys needing to uphold this evil mask and that's the only reason 😭 i remember when i was trying to write my celebrity au acomaf retelling and i was getting to the con part and i kept thinking about how stupid that plot is and how it doesn't even make a lot of sense. like you are FORCED to do heavy lifting to justify why rhys does what he does, why the mask is necessary in the first place, and why he still gaf about these people to even let them be there if they are all just surface-level evil people with no complex inner lives. and then you take the mor sexuality stuff into consideration and a lot of the keir stuff and it is just kind of stupid and hard to enjoy unless you are able to compartmentalize and be like "this is obviously only for the vibes only..."

and you might as well write whatever you want as canon anon because she clearly doesn't even know canon herself. like when she was unable to answer any of the rapid fire round questions and was like "am i gonna hurt people's feelings" like who the hell cares it's your story!!! and when she was trying to pretend like she knew the answers to some of the questions and was just keeping it a secret until it gets brought up in a future book. like please you have not thought about mor's powers stop playing in my fucking face... like there is no reason why fans need to be doing so much stretching to make sense of things. there is room for fun and ambiguity in fantasy series for sure, but when it feels like every other plot or detail, it gets on my nerves.

then she acts like smut is the only reason people have a problem with her work, and that there is no valid criticism of acotar beyond misogyny (which she does face and her work does face, to be fair). like you are not showing respect for your worldbuilding, characters, and writing, why should anyone else?? because you put 2016 neoliberal buzzfeed feminism into your books and think that writing your fmc being a mother who also is a person is groundbreaking feminism on its own??? she doesn't try to put meaningful themes, messages, or good politics into her work really. and that could be okay if her writing made up for it but rarely does it ever lol.

"that's why she doesn't grasp Rhys, Cassian being abusive because she doesn't think from that perspective at all, and the only reason she even gets that Tamlin was abusive was that what he did to her was hurting her, coping mechanisms mismatch, but when it's done in a way that heals somehow like it magically did with Nesta, it's not abuse to her, but in reality it is." you said that so perfectly anon. and you know one part of acomaf that really showed to me when i re read a few years ago that sjm doesn't understand abuse or victims???

i remember re reading feysand's fight after they go to the CON and rhys goes "stop comparing me to him! i'm not him! i would never trap you like that!" and we are supposed to be on rhysand's side here because then feyre snaps and says her harsh words to rhys right. and i just remember re reading that and going "... what the fuck?" LMAO. even a couple months ago i told an oomf that i thought that scene was extremely weird and was one of the few instances where i disliked rhys because what a horrible thing to say to your mate who you know has just endured abuse. and i can't even really blame it on rhys entirely because i can just TELLLL that sjm thinks that abuse is so simple for whatever reason.

like sorry but it's actually really fucking common for abuse victims to compare their current partner to their abuser subconsciously/get flashbacks/test if things are safe for them in their new relationship. feyre is not in the wrong for wondering if the behavior she was seeing in rhys getting protective and possessive was anything like what she experienced with tamlin!!!! and it makes no sense to make rhys, who had been the figure who was compassionate and understanding of feyre's abuse, to snap at her and become angry that feyre was (SUBCONCIOUSLY !!! comparing rhys to tamlin and testing if things were safe. like he is a much older, powerful, fae male. on the surface, tamlin and rhys have a lot in common. and even if feyre knows objectively rhys is not like tamlin and lets her choose, it is natural and okay to be unsure or to become triggered when someone expresses similar behavior) it's a ptsd response like jesus fucking christ.

it's also confusing because there are scenes where rhys does compare feyre to amarantha (like when he is like "amarantha never thanked me for warming the bed. not once." and when they are intimate in chapter 55 and they heal a wound from rhys's horrible rape and abuse) and these are great moments by the way, i am not knocking them, but i also think it's hypocritical and dumb of sjm because it shows she does understand that abuse victims are capable of being triggered and even on a subconcious level comparing their current partner to their abuser and it not being an inditement on their current partner or of their care for their partner. so i'm like, why was feyre yelled at for that? because we should just agree that rhys isn't tamlin so she should know better than to compare them? #notverywokeofyou

and yeah i also think that she views abuse as pretty black and white and chooses when an action is abusive, when it makes no damn sense.

"I would like to say for the pro male character spaces though that when clearly the author isn't consistent and it's all over the place you don't have to defend the bad actions at all, you can just say that's fucked up, the interpretation I am going with didn't have him take her to the hike/hide her pregnancy of even the Tamlin stuff if you wish to make them full blorbos or you can go into nuance and break it down without excusing any of it. In Tamlin vs Rhysand the ultimate victim comes out to be Feyre with a fight about was improsining her okay or was reproductive abuse okay, which was better, neither was, either just let your blorbo be someone who did this bad thing and work around it or forget about it but don't make it abuser olympics." agreed!! it's so exhausting seeing people do that in those spaces. especially when it comes to male characters who do bad things and they are able to excuse things for their fave, or write it off as ooc, but will jump to be on the moral high ground when it comes to being anti a similar male character. it's just not something i'm interested in at this point, and i find it a really boring way to analyze and to consume fiction.

and i agree, feyre is so often not centered in these conversations. people always make it about how traumatized rhys was or how much tamlin suffered and how the narrative was against him, and deny feyre's experiences on both ends. and then they act like they are the ones who really care about victims and it's like, no yall care about being right and looking like you are a good person.

okay but this is actually such a brutal read and it makes a lot of sense.because the way she writes tamlin isn’t how authors usually write a permanently condemned abuser. instead he’s left in this weird limbo where he does terrible things but is constantly given “outs” — so guilt, moments of help, saving people, living alone in the ruins of his court.that’s how you write a character when you want the option of redeeming them later.it feels like the abuse is written in a way that can be walked back if she ever changes direction. so tamlin ends up condemned by the narrative, but structurally still written like someone the story could forgive if it wanted to. oh you cooked cuz i never thought of it that way but i clicked whn you said that

Anon!!!! Omggg yessssssss!

This is exactly what I meant!!! Literally exactly. Sometimes I never know if my point is clear because I love a good ramble! It's like you scanned my brain! It's why I've always said, a failure to condemn the abuse just recreates it! The fandom is living with the harsh consequences of this.

The reality is that Chapter 54 gave both Tamlin and Rhysand an out. Once SJM extended the grace to Rhysand, she inadvertently extended it to Tamlin.

She attempted to combat this by simply not giving Tamlin a written explanation, but she already did by giving Rhysand one. Tamlin is so similar to Rhys in his abuse that SJM wrote outs for it. Because she always has...look at all of her characters, even unfavorable ones. All of them are written in contingency, because she doesn't plan, she leaves one foot in the door, and one foot out (*cough* Eris). Like Eris was literally given the Rhysand treatment after being established as an abusing, crazy guy who left Mor in the woods to basically die. But look at how the narrative chooses to rehabilitate him.

Now Rhysand stans are stumped because the same arguments they used for years are being used against them.

A failure to adequately and objectively comment on the reality of abuse with Rhys has left them deadlocked into a constant, evergoing conversation. That's why I think the fandom leans so heavily into labels (i.e. abuser) and not the behaviors that constitute it. It's why they use tangible language with Tamlin (he 'threw a table at her' he 'forcibly' bit her, he 'abused' feyre, 'he locked in the house'), and but lean into vague descriptors for Rhysand (he 'was afraid' 'he was 'protecting her' 'it was complicated). Notice how the intention is at the forefront, and the behavior is hardly ever mentioned. Once the label 'abuser' is put out - people stop engaging with the conversation in good faith because they don't believe it needs nuance. Every action taken becomes proof of that label.