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[cloudseeker7]

On ACOTAR’s POC representation discourse:

I honestly don’t think the series’ biggest representation problem would be solved by simply adding more dark-skinned High Fae characters. That might improve the visual diversity of the cast, but it would not address the deeper issue, which is that the narrative overwhelmingly centers the most powerful, wealthy, and socially privileged people in its world while treating the groups most structurally marginalized by that world as background scenery.

ACOTAR already has groups that function as racialized underclasses within the world: humans and lesser faeries.

And the narrative could not care less about them.

We have approximately two human characters who matter at all: Jurian and Vassa. Neither is part of a main pairing, neither gets remotely comparable page time to the High Fae cast, and both mostly exist on the edge of other people’s stories.

Then there’s Alis, the one memorable lesser faerie character, who spends the first book serving Feyre, explaining the world to her, and helping her survive, before literally becoming an npc after Feyre becomes High Fae.

Very subtle.

Meanwhile, almost every major character is High Fae. Not merely High Fae, either, but High Fae nobility. High Lords, future High Ladies, generals, courtiers, ancient warriors, people with inherited estates and multiple houses who spend ACOFAS exchanging luxury gifts and throwing parties while ordinary people are still recovering from a catastrophic war.

But it is fine, because Feyre looks sadly at a poor person sometimes.

Revolutionary.

This is a world where species determines power, legal status, wealth, safety, beauty, and social worth. Humans are vulnerable and politically disposable. Lesser faeries are servants, laborers, refugees, or background decoration. High Fae control the land, the armies, the money, and the narrative.

And somehow the story is always about how hard life is for the people living in palaces.

Rhys owns multiple mansions, but please remember that he is sad.

Feyre feels uncomfortable about her enormous wealth for roughly six minutes, so apparently the class analysis is complete.

Cassian does nothing to adress the abuse Illyrian boys and girls suffer through, but do not worry, he has trauma.

The series does not need another conventionally attractive brown High Fae prince whose oppression begins and ends with someone making a rude comment about his appearance before he returns to his estate.

It needs human protagonists. Lesser faerie protagonists. Poor characters. Servants who are actual people rather than loyal household accessories. Characters who suffer under the High Lords’ decisions and are allowed to be angry about it. Characters who do not think the Inner Circle is charming, progressive, or uniquely qualified to rule everyone forever.

Give me a lesser faerie love interest.

Give me a human woman who does not need to become High Fae in order to become powerful, beautiful, desirable, or narratively important.

Give me someone who walks into one of the Inner Circle's parties, looks at the piles of expensive presents, remembers that people are homeless after the war, and says, “What the fuck is wrong with all of you?”

Because even if all of the main characters were Black, Asian, Latino, queer, disabled, and gender-nonconforming, the story would still be racist propaganda if every person who matters remains a wealthy, beautiful, superpowered High Fae aristocrat while the oppressed species remain servants, victims, and scenery.

Representation is not just changing the skin color of the people sitting at the top.

You also have to ask why your story thinks the people at the top are the only ones worth writing about.

[cloudseeker7]

Unpopular opinion, but I genuinely think Rhysand’s mom is the worst parent in the entire series.

Yes, worse than Beron. Yes, worse than Keir. At least everyone knows those two are awful.

Rhys’s mother, meanwhile, dropped her eight-year-old son into an Illyrian war camp where “three lashes is an encouragement” and serious punishment apparently means getting whipped half to death. And before anyone says “but all Illyrian boys had to go,” Rhys was the High Lord’s son. He absolutely did not have to be there. She chose to send him.....

And then she got to be the comforting parent afterward.

The Illyrian warlords were the ones actually punishing him, while she tended his injuries, comforted him, and became the safe person in his mind. So Rhys grows up associating the Illyrians with cruelty and his mother with love and protection, even though she was the one who put him in that environment in the first place.

Which is honestly kind of genius in the worst possible way.

Keir and Beron abuse their children openly, so Mor, Lucien, and Eris hate them. Rhys’s mother outsourced the violence and kept the emotional credit.

She basically said, “I’m going to place you in a brutal military camp as a small child, but don’t worry, I’ll be here afterward with bandages and maternal warmth.”

And somehow the narrative still treats her like this wonderful, loving mother, while Rhysand's father is supposed to be the bad parent.

[cloudseeker7]

Rhysand's worst acts aren't even talked about

Okay, I know everyone in the anti Rhysand crowd loves to dump on Rhys about how he assaulted Feyre, how he never did anything to stop the wing clipping, etc... but those problems are already mentioned in the narrative(albeit portrayed in a very different light).

You know what ISN'T talked about? Illyrian child soldiers. Illyrian kids are forced to go into war camps at eight years old, they get whipped as encouragement, they have to participate in a bloody death tournament. All of this is only to give the bat boys sob backstories. And yet somehow, the fandom never talks about them half as much as the wing clippings. Like, we all know that Illyrian girls have no choice but to become housewives, and that it's terrible, but hey, at least Rhys acknowledges it's wrong, and is trying, ....well....sort of....(with dubious effectiveness...and effort...) to stop it. Let's talk about how Illyrian boys have no choice but to go into war camps, to become warriors even if they don't want to, and nobody ever acknowledges how fucked up this is in-universe.

Also, I admit I'm not an expert in human psychology, never mind fae psychology, but maybe, just maybe,... boys getting regularly whipped from age 8, being raised to value physical strength and only that... might not be an environment where healthy, open-minded men emerge? Maybe statistically, boys who grow up in a healthy, non-violent environment where they are allowed to become what they want may have a higher chance of having a healthy, non-violent attitude towards women and believe women should be allowed to be what they want? Like how does nobody in-universe even acknowledge how fucked up this shit is?

[cloudseeker7]

Hey, so... why do most acotar ships either are canon/were canon/have a chance of being canon?

Like, I've never seen a fandom WITHOUT a gazillion unhinged ships with 0% chance of making canon(with Tamsand as an exception ofc)

Where are all the Cassian/Lucien shippers? Beron/Rhysand anyone? Or Beron/Helion? Why does nobody ship non-canon ships?

[fellthemarvelous]

So much of the Jedi criticism I see in this fandom comes from a place of entitlement.

It's always "the Jedi didn't do enough" and never "the people didn't do enough to stop what was happening". The Jedi were doing more than most, but considering there were not enough of them to solve all the problems, the people should have been doing their part as well. Democracy didn't die because of the Jedi. It fell because the people elected into positions of power allowed themselves to be corrupted by greed.

It's always "the Jedi didn't do enough about slavery" when literally anyone else could have been doing something too. It was unrealistic to expect the Jedi to solve all the problems, but a lot of people like to act like slavery existed because the Jedi allowed it and not because the mechanisms that allowed slavery to exist were multi-faceted and largely happening in Hutt Space, which was sovereign and not part of the Galactic Republic. The Republic's anti-slavery laws didn't apply there, but it doesn't mean the Jedi didn't care that it was happening. There wasn't much they could do, and they were not going to start a war with the Hutts because war never solves anything, it only makes things worse for everyone involved.

"Yoda once told me that there are trillions of people in the galaxy, and only a few thousand Jedi Knights. He said that we cannot try to right every wrong. All creatures must learn to stand for what is right, and not always rely upon the Jedi." - Star Wars: Jedi Apprentice #1, The Rising Force by Dave Wolverton

Someone posted this quote the other day and it really touches on what I've been trying to say for awhile now. The Jedi can't save everyone, and they know this. They know their numbers are small and there is only so much they can do. It wasn't like one of the trillions of other sentients in the galaxy couldn't also lift a finger to do something about the injustices happening in other places, they just chose not to because "someone else will take care of it". And when someone else wasn't able to take care of it, that someone else was blamed for the existence of the problem in the first place. The same thing happened during the war. The Jedi were the only ones who were doing anything, and they were blamed for the war by people who did nothing themselves to fight back.

"If more worlds would stand up for themselves against the Separatists, this war would have been over long ago." - Obi-Wan Kenobi

Obi-Wan was 100% right and should have said it louder. We saw a handful of worlds actually fighting back, but the majority of them left the Jedi and the clones on their own to stand up against the droid armies. We see Cham Syndulla leading a group of rebels on Ryloth against the Separatists, and the Jedi came to their aid instead of leaving them to handle it all alone, but at least they had help. We see the Jedi council quietly (and without the knowledge of the Senate) send three Jedi and Captain Rex to Onderon to train the rebels (who requested the aid of the Jedi even though they were on opposing sides) to fight and take their planet back from Separatist occupation (and the help of the Jedi is the reason Onderon rejoined the Republic). We saw the people of Mon Cala fight back against the droid armies also with the help of the Jedi and the clones. The Sith started the war, and the Jedi were trying to end it, but no one else was doing anything about it.

"Perhaps if more citizens got hysterical, they'd be more inclined to speak up when the Republic tramples on their rights." - Satine Kryze

Satine was 100% right and should have said it louder. Satine was a pacifist who refused to get her planet involved with the war, but she still stood up in her own way. She didn't allow herself to be bullied by the Separatists or the Republic. She maintained Mandalore's neutrality without ever having to resort to violence. The Republic tried to strong-arm their way onto Mandalore with doctored evidence and the death of one of Mandalore's ruling council members. Satine put her life on the line to put a stop to Republic occupation of her homeworld and she succeeded. Under Palpatine's rule, the Republic was far more aggressive than it once was and used wartime as an excuse to keep taking away more and more rights from the people of the Republic.

When it comes down to it, the problems facing the galaxy during the reign of the Empire happened because the people expected someone else to take care of the problem before that. The rebel alliance formed as a result of the people realizing that if they wanted things to get better, they would need to use their voices and put in the work themselves. The surviving Jedi still helped, but it's important to understand that the people coming together and fighting back is what restored democracy.

[cloudseeker7]

To expand on this, there are 10,000 jedi in a galaxy of trillions of beings right? Blaming the jedi for all the problems in the galaxy is the real world equivalent of blaming a ten-person local volunteer group that people in other countries are starving, so they clearly have lost their way.

Also I did a thought experiment on what if the Jedi operated to free all slaves without government backing, and it didn't go well.

The Stark vs. Rogers Dilemma – Tumblr @cloudseeker7

[cloudseeker7]

Okay, so we’re told by Rhys that Tamlin gave up the location of Rhysand’s mother and sister, which led to their deaths.

And then… we get three more books, and it still makes no sense.

We’re supposed to believe that Tamlin—who was friends with Rhys—betrayed him by handing that information over to a father he hated… for no clear reason? Even if you argue Tamlin is selfish, that still doesn’t line up. Selfish decisions usually have some kind of benefit attached. This just feels irrational.

I’ve looked through fandom theories, and most of them either feel wildly out of character (like “his father threatened his mother”) or require some convoluted crossover-level twist to work(the Lorin = Rhysand's sister theory). None of them really satisfy the basic question: why would Tamlin do this?

So here’s my take.

Let’s assume Rhys is telling the truth, since we don’t have another perspective on this event. We know Rhys was supposed to be at that location with his mother and sister. We also know Tamlin’s father was weaker than Rhys, but obsessed with proving his strength.

So what if Tamlin gave up the location expecting Rhys to be there—and hoping Rhys would kill his father?

Because that’s the only version of events that actually makes sense to me. It turns the betrayal from random stupidity into a calculated risk: Tamlin tries to get rid of his abusive father by setting him up against someone stronger... and it goes horribly wrong.

PS. I mean, yeah—the real answer is probably just that SJM needed something tragic for Rhys’s backstory and a reason to make Tamlin look worse, and didn’t think too hard about the logistics. But it’s still fun to try and make it make sense.

[cloudseeker7]

On Tamlin being abusive: sjm could have made him abusive in a thousand different ways - he could have been physically abusive, or non respecting of Feyre's boundaries, but she went with 'too overprotective' as the main trait

I believe that the reason was to make readers think 'protective = bad' so nobody would question it later when Rhysand sends Feyre to steal from an eldritch abonimation for a damn useless ring

[legendeyesgold]

If this woman already had it in her head that she was going to trade Rhys for Tamlin in the Calanmai scene, then how can she make me feel like the biggest female nightmare; Rhys in UTM.Did you want a villain? You got one, he's a great villain! But that's the problem! Because to accept Feysand, they had to make the Spring Court and Tamlin (two narrative devices that you have to work hard to extract depth from, because the book doesn't leave any nuance) worse, and invent a bunch of redcon, gaslighting, and selective trauma! In the end, I didn't want Feyre to end up with either of them. The girl needs to not see Rhys as part of her abuse for me to have to swallow this, so something is wrong.

My love, how can you not expect me to believe that from the second book onwards Sarah isn't trying to make Tamlin worse so Rhys will be better? Because if Tamlin remained the same, what logic would Feyre and Tamlin have? Unless Sarah develops the fact that Feyre and Tamlin didn't actually fit together, and that after UTM they realize they don't are no longer what the other person needs, that they are on different paths etc, anyway, a healthy ending, in this case.

[cloudseeker7]

Everyone, you have to choose whether Rhys is a villain or not, you can't have it both ways.

[cloudseeker7]

Star Wars actually unpopular opinion:

Dooku was wayy more delusional that Anakin/Vader ever was. And this is from someone who is very Anakin critical.

Look, I don't support Anakin in rots in any way but like from his perspective there was at least a reasonable chance that Palpatine would actually save Padme, so if you understand his motivation as 'wanting Padme to not die while not giving a fuck about the Jedi' it sort of makes sense not that it's right in any way but you know what I'm talking about

On the other hand, try applying just any motivation to Dooku and no matter what you try, his actions fall apart.

He wanted to expose the corruption in the Senate? Sure, let's work for the guy that is responsible for that corruption instead of, y'know, letting the Jedi/public/just about anyone know about it an remove him.

He wanted to reform the Jedi? Okay, let's work for the guy whose goal is to destroy the Jedi.

He wanted revenge for Qui-gon? I don't know how many mental gymnastics you have to do to justify this but. Dooku. literally worked for the guy who ordered him killed.

Wait, you mean that Dooku is actually evil and he wanted to put himself in power? Yeah, starting a galatic wide war and purposely losing it is definitely the way to do that.

Seriously, no matter what I make out to be his goal, he sabotages himself along the way.

[cloudseeker7]

Every time sjm fans say 'this is fiction', I feel my blood pressure go up.

Are we really the same people who boycott Rowling? The same people who shame everyone who buys a piece of Harry Potter merch, because 'supporting a terf is a crime'?

Has everyone just forgotten why we don't like Rowling, and just boarded on the hate train because it looks cool?

Rowling gets criticized because she’s the author of Harry Potter—millions of people read her books, grow up with them, and are influenced by them. When she says something discriminatory about trans people, her platform and her writing give those views weight, whether we like it or not.

And y'all know what influences readers more than what the author says on an interview somewhere? That's right, their actual damn books.

Most people who read Harry Potter as kids don’t follow Rowling’s interviews now. Half my friends who loved the series don’t even know what she’s said. But literally everyone who read Acotar, well, read acotar.

Everyone who read Acotar were meant to find everything Rhysand does to be right including - but not limited to - finding eight-year-old Illyrian kids get thrown to war camps, terrorizing the people of Hewn city to 'keep up a mask' so the super special good people in Velaris can be protected. We're meant to think that Rhysand is being 100% correct when he says 'both sides were bad' pertaining to a war where one side was fighting to escape slavery, we're meant to see taxes as evil and controlling and yet find a rich couple that has five mansions while their people are recovering from a WAR romantic.

When Feyre and Rhysand scam Tarquin—one of the only characters actively trying to promote equality—we’re pushed to sympathize with them instead of him. We're supposed to think that the one guy who supports racial equality as 'too safe' and that he 'doesn't know what it is like to lose people', or whatever, when its canon that his predecessor was killed be Amarantha.

We’re supposed to root for the “good guys” fighting against human enslavement, and yet the majority of humans we get introduced to are assholes, die, or get turned into fae. And we’re supposed to see Rhysand as morally good when he says 'we released all the slaves long ago because 'they breed like bunnies and we couldn't mind control all of them', and not because, y'know, slavery is wrong.

'But its from Feyre's Pov, she's biased - ' well then sjm could have done a better job writing Feysand as flawed, instead of having every good character suck up to them.

'But it's just fiction -' and I thought we already established, with Rowling, that fiction isn’t just fiction. Stories shape how people think. They normalize values, justify systems, and influence what readers accept as “right.” We don’t get to pretend their stories exist in a vacuum when those stories reinforce harmful ideas?

[cloudseeker7]

Elriel and Elucien fans: Are searching through the past five books, sjm's interview, and every single acotar related material to find subtle hints that support their preferred ship

SJM: I don't plan ahead and just write for the vibes

[cloudseeker7]

I don't care that most of the inner circle are supposed to be poc. The inner circle are supposed to be in charge of the entire court, not just Velaris, yet they don't do much to improve the lives of everyone elsewhere. They don't do anything to stop the bigotry against 'lesser fae'. They refer to Illyrians as 'brutal savages' and yet conscript them to fight their wars. If your characters are the oppressors of in-universe bigotry situations, they're racist. It doesn't matter if their skin color is black or white or brown.

sjm you're not suddenly progressive for framing characters who uphold in-universe bigotry as heroes just because they're not white

[legendeyesgold]

It bothers me that a large part of MAF avoids addressing the elephant in the room (Rhys in UTM) as much as possible, and if the book mentions it, it's only to make us feel sorry for poor Rhys or to see Feyre suffering for EVERYTHING except what Rhys did to her, completely disregarding it as part of the trauma and not even seeing it as an enemy.

I know, I know. Rhys saved her. He explains everything in chapter 54, okay, but it's pretty obvious the book avoids this subject until that chapter on purpose, because by now... we're already on Rhys's side. We've already grown fond of and fallen in love with Feysand.

This will never be an old topic for me.

@snarkformysanity

[cloudseeker7]

I've read in Harry Potter fandom discussions that an interesting side effect of black and white morality is that it makes you think that every bad person with a sob backstory is a good person, and every good guy that made one mistake is a terrible piece of shit. This probably applies to the Star Wars fandom as well.

[cloudseeker7]

I cannot understand people who say “you can’t understand Chaol Westfall if you didn’t read Tower of Dawn.”

…because I liked him in every book before that.

I liked him in Throne of Glass, where he kills a man to save Celaena’s life.

I liked him in Crown of Midnight, where the loyalty he prides himself on leads to devastating consequences, and everything he believes about the world starts to unravel.

I liked him in Heir of Fire, where he joins the rebels—who literally kidnapped him the previous book—to fight against the tyranny he once served.

I liked him in Queen of Shadows, where he struggles to face his best friend being possessed by the Valg.

I didn’t need Tower of Dawn to make me like Chaol.

[cloudseeker7]

wait I've just realized that Rhysand's mum is really shady

parenting style: sends her kid to an Illyrian camp where he gets whipped as daily punishment

as a mother in law: says that her son's future wife must succeed in… stealing from an eldritch goddess

[cloudseeker7]

my personal reason why I give Throne of Glass a free pass while nitpicking ACOTAR to hell

Ok, so I’ve read a lot of analysis posts on Tumblr pointing out that Throne of Glass and Aelin have a ton of issues. (Like Aelin literally saying she’d colonize a bunch of countries in Kingdom of Ash.) Logically, that should bother me a lot.

But weirdly, it never makes me hate Aelin or ToG the way I hate Rhysand and ACOTAR.

I think the reason is that ACOTAR tries to engage with real-world moral standards—things like abusive relationships (Tamlin locking Feyre in the manor) or criticizing rulers for how they govern (like Tamlin being framed as a bad ruler for, uh, collecting taxes). The narrative clearly signals that these things matter morally.

In fact, that moral framing is literally the justification for the series switching its MMC, so we’re clearly supposed to take it seriously.

The problem is that the story holds Tamlin to those standards but not Rhys or the Inner Circle, even when they do things that should be just as questionable, if not more.

Meanwhile Throne of Glass never really sets up those same standards in the first place. The moral bar in that world is basically: don’t be an eldritch parasite that possesses people and feeds on pain and misery. Compared to that, a lot of other stuff just slides by.

So when Aelin says something wild like “yeah I’ll colonize this continent for my future kids,” my brain just kind of goes: ok sure, I’ll pretend this never happened. The narrative itself isn’t really inviting me to judge it the same way.

But ACOTAR does invite that kind of moral reading—and then fails its own test.

So I end up nitpicking it way more.