Hi! I'm writing a book about a princess with far too many love interests and not nearly enough brain cells (she shares one with her handmaiden, Sappho, who usually keeps custody of it.)
The majority of the book takes place in a fantasy world equivalent of the Mediterranean. Since there are gods and goddesses who aren't always portrayed very nicely and aren't based on real religions, I decided it's better not to make the setting a 1:1 reflection of the real world. However, I still want to honor the cultures that lend these fantasy lands their backbones. I'm still researching and developing characters and countries, and if anyone has feedback on how to write better representation, I'm happy to receive it!
If I'm doing a good job:
Thalia, Sappho, Pelagios, etc. = Ancient Greek (with intentional liberties, especially regarding religion). It might help me to influence their values and personalities based on different regions and time periods in Greek history
King Cyrus = Achaemenian. He's not very sympathetic so I should probably include at least another Persian character.
Faraj = of Amazigh descent (Likely his mother should have passed down more of his culture to him than she currently has. That needs to be fixed.)
Aisata = Undecided (more research needed at this point), from a nation in West Africa, possibly Mali
Zhurong Yu = Tang Dynasty, with tropes from Xianxia and court dramas. Strongly influenced by Taoist and Buddhist beliefs despite having a strong Confucian streak.
Zhuge Wu = More aligned with the culture as it's reflected in the Warring States period, again incorporating tropes from Xianxia and court dramas. Very Confucian in philosophy.
Empress Diao = Likely from the region near Turkey; more research and probably a name change are needed. Again, not the most sympathetic.
Things I want to avoid:
Explicit references to real religions
Treading into unsavory territory regarding tropes and stereotypes, intentionally or not
use of the word "tribe"
A "western" concept of "good" and "evil." Thalia's character arc is influenced by the Taoist idea of yin, yang, and balance, but I'm also going to be researching other cultures' concepts as well.
implying slavery is okay, even if the characters have their struggles working out the ethical implications when it's all they've known
characterizing any one group as being mainly or mostly heroes or villains or being inherently better or worse
Poorly navigating the power dynamics between Thalia and her peers, particularly Faraj.
Erasing Thalia's bisexuality, even if she has a preference for men
Romanticising Thalia's depression.
My Wish List
More characters of a wider variety of ethnicities and more significant parts for the non "Greek" characters, especially early on.
Improving relations between Thalia and her fellow wives as she lives in court. Some can be mean, but there needs to be some camaraderie
Passing the Bechdel test in most chapters lol
Visible trans characters (I have some, but "outing" them feels like it's not my business?)
Visible disabled characters
Aisata deserves all the love. She should win a popularity contest.
Thalia entering her Villain Era should be fun to read
A consistent message and theme about the importance of listening to, learning from, and uplifting others; intersectionality
Trying to get back in the reading scene. Currently reading A Court of Thorns and Roses. I'm always looking for new friends, so feel free to say hi, especially if we have stuff in common!
The fact that the Gandoura, Belgha and Burnous have been worn in North Africa since antiquity?! That's wild
Gandoura is still worn loose and beltless (which was apparently a strange sight to the Imperial Romans). There's also some coin and stele depictions that show it worn by a chieftain and it has those large arm openings that gandoura still have. Only it's length has changed, cause obviously it would have been much shorter. It was literally two rectangular pieces of fabric sewn together with some sort of decorated border (as described by some ancient Roman, idk), but like... it still is fff.
Feel much connection to my Mauretanian forebears now.
Yes it is the Saffron which is cultivated in a small town in the heart of the atlas mountains named in Taliouine.
The Moroccan Saffron is known as one of the best kinds of Saffron in the whole world.
The Saffron is derived from a flower called "Saffron Crocus".
The local people of Taliouine believe in Saffron abilities to heal about 90 sickness, that's why they use it in food and also with the tea and present it to their visitors.
Due to the importance of the red gold the town of Taliouine hosts a festival every year called "Taliouine's festival of Saffron".
Just for your information 1 kg of Saffron can costs you about 2000 USD.
Learn about Morocco's indigenous people from their deep-rooted history to present-day experiences. The Amazigh are resilient people with the
Music is played during celebrations and festivals, the most popular instruments being ginbri or loutar, a fretless, plucked lute with three strings found mostly in the Middle Atlas Region. A bendir is a snare frame drum. A tende is a drum made with mortar and pestle. The Qaraqib is a large metal castanet.
Blood, in the context of sacrifice, is also a sign of reconciliation, of asking for forgiveness and of respect (tagharst). It is also the symbol of hospitality, a sheep is slaughtered to welcome a guest or any stranger because to shed blood is to establish a bond of respect with the newcomer and include him in society and in the community, the jmacath.
What a hat ! She’s representing a poor peasant, is she?
Yes and no. This is of course a folk, therefore a commoner’s dress of the 18th century, however Symi island was particularly prosperous at the time. The bridal dresses were meant to indicate the rich dowery and wealth of the bride. So this is not exactly a hat but a pile of 42 headscarves made of silk, on top of each other. These headscarves were stabilised there with the use of golden withes. On these withes they also put other valuable objects, such as jewels and golden two-headed eagles, like in the picture. (The symbol of the Greek Orthodox Church, tracing from the late Byzantine Empire.) This is a very rare traditional dress nowadays. The reason is that at some point the economy of the island declined and families would start selling their fortunes, including the jewels and the withes. As a result, very few original dresses of this type survive.
By the way, notice the fur. This is not a first in Symi, other Greek islands have dresses with fur as well, even though they have a much milder winter than mainland Greece. The reason is it was mostly a sign of wealth and luxury. Meanwhile, fur in mainland attires was rarer, usually restricted in few northern urban areas, while the rural folk dresses were made of thick wool as those regions were significantly poorer.
(Hold onto your schlong, this post is gonna be LONG)
Thank you, ACOTAR fans, for participating in the fandom demographics survey! There were a total of 351 participants who took the survey, and I am extremely grateful for everyone's contributions. I've spent quite a bit of time sifting through the data determining how best to share my findings. I've decided to break them up into several categories, and each section will have the methods, results, and discussion of that category all together.
I do want to remind everybody that this is meant to be in good fun. I don't want any ship wars or character hate in the notes of this post, nor do I want anybody to take these results as a personal attack. Without further ado, let's get into it!
Table of Contents
Overall results of the survey
Preferences of fans based on age and sexuality
Trends based on the characters/ships that people like/dislike
Conclusion and overall thoughts
1. Overall results of the survey
This is, essentially, just the raw data with each option visualized as a percentage of the total number of participants. Click on the pie graphs to see them better.
Age, Gender, and Sexuality
The largest percentage of fans are in the age range 18-24 years old (44%). 26% are 25-30 years old, 16% are under 18 years old, 12% are 31-40 years old, and 2% are over 41 years old.
An overwhelming proportion of fans identify as female 92%. 5% are non-binary, 1% are other, and 1% are questioning. There was one male who took the survey (whoever you are, keep your head high king!)
The most common sexuality was straight (46%), followed by bisexual (30%). 8% are asexual, 6% are questioning, 5% are pansexual, 3% are lesbians, and 2% are other.
Based on this, most ACOTAR fans are young women who are attracted to men, which makes sense, considering that is the target demographic. I also did not do any further comparisons between fans based on gender, simply because there aren't enough non-women to draw any real conclusions.
Favorite and least favorite book in the series
The second book, A Court of Mist and Fury, is the favorite book in the series (40%), followed by A Court of Silver Flames (23%). 17% chose A Court of Thorns and Roses as their favorite, 17% chose A Court of Wings and Ruin, 2% chose A Court of Frost and Starlight, and 1% couldn't pick a favorite.
The novella A Court of Frost and Starlight was the least favorite book (41%), followed by A Court of Silver Flames (25%). 20% chose A Court of Thorns and Roses, 6% chose A Court of Mist and Fury, 6% chose A Court of Wings and Ruin, and 2% couldn't pick a least favorite.
Overall, A Court of Mist and Fury is the fan favorite and not a lot of people liked A Court of Frost and Starlight. A Court of Thorns and Roses and A Court of Silver Flames are pretty controversial: about an equal number picked them as their favorite AND least favorite book. It makes sense for ACOTAR, since that book is so different from the other books and focuses on Tamlin and the Spring Court, whereas the other books focus on the Night Court and Inner Circle, which are fan favorites. ACOSF also seems to be pretty controversial, with it's focus on Nesta, who herself is a somewhat controversial character.
Favorite Character and Least Favorite Character
(Note: for characters, I differentiated between all the top contenders and combined all the ones that only got a few votes into the section "Other.")
The favorite character is Nesta Archeron (23%), followed by Lucien Vanserra (18%). Next is Elain Archeron (12%), Feyre Archeron (10%), Rhysand (7%), Azriel (7%), Cassian (6%), Eris Vanserra (6%), Gwyneth Berdara (5%), and then other characters fill out the remaining 7%.
The least favorite characters were pretty evenly split between true villains (Ianthe, the King of Hybern, Amarantha, etc) and non-villain characters (Rhysand, Morrigan, Tamlin, etc). The most disliked character was Ianthe (19%), followed by Rhysand (16%). Then Amarantha (13%), Beron Vanserra (9%), the King of Hybern (7%), Morrigan (5%), Tamlin (5%), Nesta (4%), Elain (4%), Amren (4%), and other characters for the remaining 15%.
The Archeron sisters, Vanserra brothers, and the Bat boys make up almost the entirety of the favorite characters. The least favorite characters were a lot more diverse and spread out, but generally the true villains were disliked the most.
Favorite Ship and Least Favorite Ship
(Note: I did the same thing for ships as for characters, where the lowest voted for ships are combined into an "Other" category)
The number one favorite ship is Feyre/Rhysand (22%) followed closely by Cassian/Nesta (19%). Next is Lucien/Elain (16%), Azriel/Elain (13%), Azriel/Gwyn (6%), and Azriel/Eris (5%). 6% said their ship wasn't present in the survey, and the remaining 10% is in the category "Other".
The number one least favorite ship is Azriel/Elain (26%). Then Feyre/Tamlin (12%), Tamlin/Elain (11%), Feyre/Rhysand (10%), Azriel/Gwyn (7%), Tamlin/Rhysand (4%), Cassian/Nesta (4%), Lucien/Elain (4%), Rhysand/Nesta (3%), with the remaining 20% being covered in the "Other" category.
Most of the ship likes/dislikes seem centered around who Elain is paired with, and who Azriel is paired with. Feyre features surprisingly little in the ship wars (other than between Feysand and Feylin), and she isn't shipped with any other characters despite being the main character.
Favorite and Least Favorite Aspect of the Series
The characters themselves are overwhelmingly fandom's favorite aspect of the series (44%). 16% said their favorite was the romance/smut, 13% is the character development, 12% is the worldbuilding, 5% is the canon ships, 5% is the plot, and 5% is any other aspect.
The "other" category had the most votes for least favorite aspect of the series, at 32%. The worldbuilding aspect had 20% of the votes as least favorite, then 17% for the plot, 15% for the character development, 7% for the characters, 5% for the canon ships, and 5% for the romance/smut.
People really like the characters in this series, which makes sense for fandom! I'll admit that this section's flaws are the lack of options, so it also makes sense that so many people chose "other" as their favorite/least favorite aspect of the series.
2. Preferences of fans based on age and sexuality
For this section, I wanted to see if there were trends in favorite/least favorite things based on age and sexuality. I ran a chi-square test, which looks at differences between categorical variables with a significance factor of p=0.05 (or, there being a 5% chance that any differences between categories are due to random error and not actual differences).
A chi-square test works best with 2 categories that have an approximate equal number of samples. To this end, I combined ages and sexualities in the following ways:
"Under 18 years old" and "18-24 years old" are combined in a category of "younger" fans. The remaining three age groups (comprised of fans aged 25 and older) are combined into a category of "older" fans. This gave us 209 younger fans and 142 older fans.
Every fan that didn't identify as straight was combined into a single category of "queer" fans. This gave us 163 straight fans and 188 queer fans
Age
There was no difference between younger and older fans in their least favorite book, favorite ship, and favorite/least favorite aspect of the series (p>0.05).
More younger people have Rhysand and Amarantha as their least favorite character than older people (p=0.02), and more younger people picked Feylin, Feysand, and Nessian as their least favorite ship than older people (p=0.05).
While not statistically significant, there were also trends in more younger people having ACOTAR as their favorite book (p=0.1) and Feyre as their favorite character (p=0.1).
Sexuality
There was no difference between queer and straight fans and their least favorite book, favorite/least favorite character, and favorite/least favorite aspect of the series (p>0.05).
More queer fans have ACOTAR as their favorite book, and more straight fans have ACOMAF as their favorite book (p=0.0007). More queer fans have Azris as their favorite ship, and more straight fans have Gwynriel as their favorite ship (p=0.03). In general, queer people had a much greater variety in their favorite ships (they had more favorites in the Ship Not Present and Other category).
While not statistically significant, there was also a trend of queer people having Feylin, Feysand, and Tamlain as their least favorite ship, and more straight people have Gwynriel as their favorite ship (p=0.08).
In general, there are actually not huge differences between younger/older fans, and queer/straight fans! I do think it's interesting that both younger people AND queer people prefer ACOTAR as their favorite book.
3. Trends based on the characters/ships that people like/dislike
For this section, I wanted to isolate all the people who voted for something in one category, and look at the other choices they made. So, for example, looking at the least favorite character from people who voted for Nesta as their favorite character. So these stats ONLY take into account the people who voted in that category. I restricted the characters/ships that got the most votes in each category.
General trends
To keep this from getting too long and dull, I will only report on the findings that I find particularly interesting. Some general trends I saw that don't seem specific to each category are:
the "least favorite character" being a true villain (Ianthe, Amarantha, King of Hybern, etc).
The least favorite ship being Azriel/Elain
The least favorite book being ACOFAS
I'll write out all the results, but here's a table of the trends I saw
Favorite character
People who voted for Nesta dislike Rhysand, and their favorite ship is Nessian. They also tend to dislike Feylin and Feysand, and their favorite book is ACOSF.
For Lucien, they dislike Ianthe and Rhysand, the favorite ship is Elucien, and the least favorite ship is Elriel (the most popular rival ship for Elain). Their favorite books are ACOTAR and ACOMAF.
For Elain, the overwhelming favorite ship is Elriel (85%), and they dislike Tamlain and Gwynriel (both rival ships for Elain and Azriel, respectively).
For Feyre and Rhysand, the favorite ship is Feysand and the favorite book is ACOMAF (true for people who voted for either of them as their favorite character).
Least favorite character
Again, most people voted for true villains in this category and there weren't many interesting trends. I did find that people that voted for Rhysand as their least favorite like Nesta and Lucien, and their least favorite ship is Feysand. Their favorite ships are in the "Other" or "Ship Not Present" category, and their favorite book is ACOTAR.
Favorite ship
For Feysand, the favorite characters are Feyre and Rhysand, the least favorite ship is Feylin, and the favorite book is ACOMAF. Interestingly, Feysand fans voted for the "true villains" for their least favorite character over Tamlin, who only got 8% of the vote for least favorite character. More evidence that the villains and non-villains should be split up for the "least favorite character" category.
For Nessian, the favorite character is overwhelmingly Nesta (only 22% of Nessian stans voted for Cassian as their favorite) and the favorite book is ACOSF.
For Elucien, the favorite character is Lucien, and the favorite book is ACOMAF.
For Elriel, the favorite character is Elain, least favorite ships are Tamlain and Gwynriel, and the favorite book is ACOWAR.
For Gwynriel, the favorite character is Gwyn, and the favorite book is ACOSF.
Least favorite ship
For people who disliked Elriel, the favorite character tends to Lucien, and the favorite ships are Elucien and Gwynriel. They also like Nessian and Feysand. Favorite books are ACOMAF and ACOSF.
For people who dislike Feylin, the favorite character is Nesta, and the favorite ships are Nessian and Feysand. Favorite book is ACOMAF, least favorite book is ACOTAR.
For people who dislike Tamlain, their favorite character is Elain and the favorite ship is Elriel. I'm honestly surprised that so many people HATE Tamlin/Elain this much, I didn't even know it was a major ship?
For people who dislike Feysand, the favorite characters are Nesta and Lucien and the least favorite character is Rhysand. Favorite book is ACOTAR, least favorite is ACOMAF.
For people who dislike Gwynriel, the favorite character is Elain, and the favorite ship is Elriel.
4. Conclusion and overall thoughts
So here we are! I'm sure there are some things here that are not a surprise (e.g. Feysand stans liking ACOMAF and dislike ACOTAR), and some things that are a surprise (nobody likes ACOFAS). If anybody else has more thoughts on these results and what they mean, I would love to hear them.
In general, I hope this survey reveals that there is no one, singular, overwhelming "fandom" making decisions and casting blame. Even the most popular characters/ships didn't get more than 25% of the total fandom vote! There is not one ship ruling the rest of us, there are about 5-6 popular ships with plenty of fans who love that ship. I hope that fans will read this survey and see ACOTAR fandom as a diverse community of fans with plenty of space for everybody to co-exist.
I welcome any and all questions and comments! Anybody that wants to see my stats or raw data need only ask, and I will be more than happy to share. There were some issues inherent in the survey that are due to my own mistakes, so I would not be OPPOSED to running an updated survey sometime in the future.
Stay safe, be kind, and thank you again for your participation.
