JK Rowling’s Biases and how they’ve Affected the Harry Potter and Marauders Fandom
Part 1: Moaning Myrtle
(Warning: This is a long post.)
For being a story that covers themes of discrimination, equal treatment and anti-genocide, the Harry Potter series has a lot of hidden racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia etc. hidden in between its pages. One of the main purposes of the Marauder’s fandom, at least in my interpretation, is to try to combat these issues. We’ve tried to bring in a more diverse caste, coming up with racial headcanons for characters, incorporating more homosexual relationships and making more characters trans in order to explore their lives and combat Rowling’s transphobia, but there are still a lot of biases that the fandom has unwittingly adopted due to Rowling being the mother. JK Rowling's exclusive definition of ‘feminism’ has been explored in detail in reference to her transphobic views, however I think it is also important to explore how these biases held by the author have impacted her writing, and as a result, the Harry Potter and Marauder’s Fandom.
The way JK Rowling writes women in the Harry Potter series is very telling. While she claims that she writes female characters who are ‘empowering,’ further analysis proves that she does anything but. To me, one of the biggest examples of this is Moaning Myrtle. A girl who is so known for how annoying she is, that she is called by that title more often than her actual name, which is Myrtle Warren. Her characterization is an annoying, borderline creepy teenage girl ghost who is constantly crying and complaining, and always getting in the way of the main characters. She is occasionally helpful, but for the most part, she is just treated as a nuisance. My problem with this is that when I looked more into Myrtle’s backstory, it became very clear to me that she had every right to complain and cry due to what happened to her.
The official canon story of Myrtle is that she was a muggle-born wizard who was sorted into Ravenclaw. Due to her glasses, acne and all around annoying disposition, she was frequently bullied to the point of isolating herself in the girls’ bathroom so that she could have the privacy to cry. On one of these occasions, she heard someone outside of her stall, a boy, and stepped out to scold him only to be instantly killed. This is Myrtle’s account of her death. From there, an investigation is laid out at Hogwarts in order to find the cause of her death. Upon finding an Acromantula in the possession of a half-giant student, Hagrid, it is decided that he was the cause of her death and he is expelled. Tom Riddle, a half-blood boy who helped discover this, is given an award. The problem with this, is that it is very clear that the Ministry did not do their research.
The first thing that stands out to me about this case is that they had a first-hand witness that they did not use. Myrtle is a ghost, and it is canon that she was delighted to tell anyone about her death. I would imagine right after the events she would be less delighted and more desperate for justice, but it is still reasonable to assume that she could have been interviewed about the cause of her death. They literally had access to the victim’s first-hand account, and they didn’t use it. How do we know? Because people don’t just instantly die upon seeing an acromantula. If that were the case, when Aragog was discovered, several ministry workers would have died, and Hagrid himself would have to have some kind of magical exception. While Acromantula’s are dangerous to wizards and cause death, they do not provide the instant death that Myrtle describes. Instead, they likely wrap their victims in webs and eat them alive. As seen with Nearly-Headless Nick, the Bloody Baron and the Grey Lady, ghosts will still sustain the injuries that caused their deaths. Moaning Myrtle’s ghost has no injuries, no bite marks, no missing limbs, no spider webs, so clearly, this was not death by acromantula. If second year Hermoine Granger was able to figure this out, professional aurors and ministry workers should have too. So why didn’t they?
There is a layered answer to this question, but the core of it all is racism. The Harry Potter series explores racism using the metaphor of blood purity. Rather than going into the difference of treatment people receive based on color of skin, it highlights how something as simple as magical parentage can completely change how people are treated and how valuable their lives are. For the purpose of this analysis, keep in mind that the main minority groups that are highlighted in the wizarding world are those whose magical abilities and humanity can be questioned. It has less to do with appearance, and more to do with purity. In Moaning Myrtle’s case, she is not pure. She is a muggle-born, and so according to the general prejudice of the wizarding world, her death is seen as less important. Essentially, due to the fact that she is part of a minority group, one that is ‘less-powerful’ and therefore less important, her murder case is swept under the rug and treated as inconsequential. In the real world, this phenomenon is known as “Missing White Woman Syndrome.” When a white woman or girl goes missing, the media coverage for her case is extensive. This is even more true if she is attractive, able-bodied and from a middle-class family. However, when women and girls of color go missing, the cases are treated as less important. Both in the UK and the US, the majority of missing person’s cases to make the news are of white women and girls, even if there are just as many of not more women of color who have gone missing. What this tells the general populace is that white women are seen as a more tragic loss to society than the loss of a woman of color. (If you would like to further research this phenomenon, I encourage you to watch this video on the subject. It is very short and is made by a white crime sociologist. If you would prefer a more extensive breakdown, this video breaks down this subject as well as several others that relate to it, and is made by a Black woman with a lot of knowledge on the subject.)
If Myrtle was pureblood in the magical world, her murder case would have been seen as much more tragic. It would have likely become an urban legend that the entire school still talks about even in Harry Potter’s day, a case that people know all the intricate details about and make their own little magical true-crime podcasts on. Instead, most students don’t even know how she died, or care. They don’t know that she was murdered, or that her accused murderer was literally the man hired to be their groundskeeper. What I really want to know is, did Myrtle know about that? Did she know that Hagrid was literally there at Hogwarts, living a good life and generally unaffected by the murder accusations thrown at him? If a man was accused of murdering a white girl, or in this case a pureblood girl, would it be possible for the general populace to allow him anywhere near their children without putting up a massive fuss?
Another problem is, did Myrtle actually believe Hagrid did it? Did anyone actually bother to tell her when her murder case was supposedly ‘solved?’ She’s a Ravenclaw student, and they are known to be good at solving riddles and finding hidden messages. Would Myrtle actually believe that it was Hagrid and an Acromantula who killed her? If she was told this by the ministry, why didn’t she mention this to Harry in the recounting of her death? My best interpretation is that either no one actually bothered to tell Myrtle, or that she knew they were wrong. Here’s the thing: if I was accepted to a prestigious school and told it was one of the ‘safest places on earth’ and told I would learn magic there, and then I was bullied and murdered there, and people didn’t even bother to tell me about the resolution of the case or solve it properly, I think I would be pretty annoyed. And, I might start to have something of a victim complex. I might cry a lot, and whine and complain that everyone hates me, especially since there’s so much evidence. I was murdered, and hardly anyone cared. That would sting. She was lied to and told it would be safe, and then she was murdered. And yet every time she whines and cries, it is chalked up to her just being ‘annoying.’ See the problem?
What makes this case even more disturbing is the underlying racism in the accusation of Hagrid in the first place. Hagrid is again, a part of a minority group. He is a half-giant, and is overall a pretty sensitive person who has a strange obsession with the odd and misunderstood magical beasts. On the other hand, Tom Riddle was a known purist, as it is canon that in his years of Hogwarts he created a group of pre-death eaters known as the Knights of Walpurgis. With this clique, he would bully and humiliate muggle-born students on a regular basis. So who sounds like the individual more likely of murder? A low-intelligent, well-meaning but overall useless half-giant, or a cruel, competent half-blood human who was attractive, ambitious, and had a whole life ahead of him to live? Everyone has seen how reluctant authorities are to convict young men of SA or abuse, especially when they have so much potential. But this is only the case when these young men are white. If they are of any different race, people will rush to paint them as horrible villains the minute they get the chance, even if there is not enough evidence to back up the claims. Returning to situations in the real world, this was often the case of lynching black men during the Jim Crow law era in the United States. White men who did not work for the law would see a black man have an affair with a white woman and paint it as assault, because there was no way that a white woman would actually consent to be with a man like that. They would kill innocent black boys like Emmett Louis Till for things as simple as talking back to a white lady, because they were seen as guilty from birth. This again reflects into the Harry Potter universe, since it became so easy for Ministry workers to accuse Hagrid despite the evidence. Not only that, but they rewarded Tom Riddle since he was the one to ‘discover’ Hagrid’s guilt. The only reason Hagrid did not get a harsher punishment is because his victim was just as meaningless and useless to the wizarding society as he was.
If you didn’t already hate Dumbledore enough, it should also be said that he knew about everything the whole time. He suspected Tom Riddle, enough to keep ‘an annoyingly close eye on him’ his remaining days at Hogwarts, and yet he said nothing. The year that these events occurred was 1943. Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald, the cause of a massive world-wide wizarding world, in 1945, two years afterwards. Before this, if we are to believe the events of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to be canon, he was still an active participant in hunting Grindelwald and had several epic battles with him. In 1932 he had the Qilin bow to him in order to elect him as the next Supreme Mugwump (this scene was ridiculous to me but it is canon), meaning that he had a reputation. He had a reputation of being a powerful and intelligent and well-meaning wizard, so if he had spoken up and said something about Myrtle’s case, people would have listened. He intervened in areas of the law plenty of times during the Harry Potter series, but while teaching at Hogwarts decided not to get involved when an innocent girl was killed and an innocent half-giant boy was expelled and blamed for it. But he did feel the need to keep and eye on Tom Riddle. So he knew. He just did nothing.
What really bothers me about this is that Myrtle Warren’s characterization in the Marauder's and Harry Potter fandom remains mostly the same in comparison to how JK Rowling wrote her. I’m not saying she’s not annoying. She is. I’m not saying the bath scene with Harry in the fourth book wasn’t creepy. It was. What I am saying is that no matter how annoying, weird, pathetic or even creepy Moaning Myrtle is, the fact that she is still only characterized for that is really sad to me. No one (as far as I’m aware) has tried to explore the true tragedy behind her story, and the injustices she was forced to face and just accept. Just because she’s annoying does not mean she deserves what happened to her, yet many fanfic writers still write her as nothing more than an annoying teenager to be ignored and forgotten. I want to be clear, I’m not blaming anyone for this but JK Rowling, just be careful about the kinds of biases you are embracing when you continue to write a character the way that JK Rowling did. I should also add as a disclaimer that I am white, so it is very fair to say I may not have a perfect perception of these things either. If there is anything that you would like to add to this, please do! I would love to see this become a big philosophical discussion.
using violence to liberate people from sweatshops, unsafe mines, and grinding poverty isn't the same as using violence to impose those things on people. the idea that violence is morally repugnant regardless of context is a belief that every oppressor throughout history would love for the oppressed to hold
Every time I see bullshit about women never EVER being able to beat men in any sport, I think about how in martial arts classes I, a cis woman, 5' 8" and 145 pounds, regularly beat the tar out of 6' 2" 230 pound cis dude weightlifters. One guy ragequit class. He came in cocky as hell and talking the standard bs line about how a woman simply never could beat a man in a fight because they're physically weaker and our instructor was like. Okay. Put the pads on you're sparring her. Yes, her, the one 4" shorter and 100 pounds lighter than you.
It wasn't close I beat the pants off that man, and others like him. I did it more than once. Some guys got humble and stayed. One guy got angry and stormed out.
And I think about that every fuck damn time I hear that bullshit, which seems to be all the fuck over the place these days. Oh, women are just fragile little soft delicate flower creatures who can't do ANYTHING and could NEVER compete with big strong manly muscular strong MEN.
I think about driving that dude into the mats and seeing the brutal reality of this big dude's misogany meet the realization that a woman was beating his ass literally that second, that none of his strength could stop the fact that I'd just hip thrown him facefirst into the mats and that had I actually connected with the axe kick to his neck I would have crushed a bunch of important shit and he could not stop me, and his whole psyche collapsing like a dying star in that moment.
Anyway, don't ever fall for it, ladies, and there's absolutely no goddamn reason to get your knickers in a twist about trans people in sports.
An excerpt from the trial of Elinor Crane, who was arrested in Middlesex in 1693 on suspicion of burglary. A witness claimed one of the burglars was a woman in men's clothing, and Elinor had previously been seen in the area dressed as a man.
"But the Court asking her why she went in Mans Apparel, the Prisoner replyed, She went to Wooe a Widow. Upon the whole Matter the Jury brought her in not Guilty."
(source: Old Bailey Proceedings: Accounts of Criminal Trials, April 26, 1693.)
Mor sipped her tea, the portrait of elegant innocence. “We’d be better off throwing Nesta into the Court of Nightmares. She’d thrive there.”
✧˖°.
Morrigan’s gaze swept over Nesta’s face, noting the lack of sweat or flushed skin, the hair barely out of place. The female said quietly, “My vote would have been to dump you right back in the human lands, you know.”
✧˖°.
Dark fire simmered in Morrigan’s eyes. “I knew plenty of people like you[Nesta] once.” Her hand drifted to her abdomen. “You never deserve the benefit of the doubt that good people like him[Cassian] give you.”
I think it would be funny to write a murder mystery where not only did every single character involved have an obvious motive to kill this mf, they were actually all attempting to murder him first, but the murder attempts all cancelled each other out all except for one. Two people tried to poison him but the poisons just happen to work as antidotes for each other, and instead of killing him only gave him the shits, and due to having the shits he couldn't go hunting that day like he had planned, foiling the plans of the one who had conditioned his favourite hunting horse to panic and bolt at the cue of a whistle, and the other murder attempt of tampering with his gun so that it would have exploded his whole face off.
The whole mystery isn't about who could have done it or how, but who was the one who got lucky and actually succeeded.
Yet another new study debunked the basis for the anti-trans sports bans. It was never about sports but for creating legal avenues for exclusion and abjection. This is one of the largest analyses ever conducted, involving 52 studies and 6,485 trans people. Read the study here.
(Magic glue, cuffs, stuck in a closet, whatever!!)
UNEDITED, RAW, NINE AM MB REPORTING FOR DUTY
-
“Lucien,” Elain began timidly from across the table. Instinctively, his gut tightened as he braced himself for whatever she might say. “Surely you can part with one finger—”
“No,” he snapped, his patience wearing thin. “There is some trick to this that we’re simply not understanding—”
“I’m not certain you have the capability for understanding!” Elain retorted, her faux sweetness evaporating. It was supposed to be a children’s toy, not a vice he’d never escape from. Cassian had presented it to the pair of them, grin on his face.
“Nesta got me with it earlier,” he’d said to Elain, trying to rope her into the merriment. At best, it would have been an awkward second where their fingers were connected without touching. They’d tug, stuck, laugh nervously, and then be separated. What was the harm?
The harm was hours upon hours of close proximity, touches that had started careful before coming impatient, and sharp words lobbied in his direction.
It was the most they’d spoken since…ever, really.
Lucien yanked, put his pointer finger remained trapped within, locking him to Elain. She rolled her eyes before resting her chin in the palm of her hand, elbow thunking comically loud against the dark wood.
“Do you have a better idea?” he asked, mimicking her posture with an easy grace.
A scowl darkened her otherwise pretty face. “Let me cut off your finger—”
“You’re not cutting off my finger!” Lucien half exploded, rising from his chair and taking her with him. Elain yanked in response, dragging him back to his seat with a forceful finality.
Using her free hand and its pointer finger, she jammed it in the space between them. “Don’t raise your voice at me, Lucien Vanserra.”
He couldn’t help himself. The absurdity of their situation cracked through his overwhelming stress and Lucien began to laugh.
“Always chained together, huh?” he joked, still chuckling.
Elain looked as if she might start shouting again before she exhaled, a small smile cracking her own features. “Apparently so. I suppose fate has it out for us.”
“It could be worse, you know,” Lucien hedged, still smiling like none of it mattered—just in case.
Elain’s eyes traveled toward the window at the far side of the room. “True. It could have been Rhys.”
Lucien’s stomach flipped with excitement. What did that mean? He wanted to ask her, but Cassian strode in, boots muffled by the carpet beneath their feet. One hand held a sandwich piled high with meat, the other held Nyx, still too small to eat the sandwich he was currently fisting toward.
“Still stuck?” Cassian asked, arching a brow. “Here, I thought you’d figure it out…you just…” he adjusted the baby in his arms to mime pressing their fingers close together. “Relax.”
It was the only thing he and Elain hadn’t tried. Cassian turned his back and swung the door shut behind him with a cheerful finality. The wood thudded dully, as though to say obviously. Elain hadn’t moved, frozen in place.
“I’m not going to grab you,” Lucien grumbled.
Elain swallowed. “I know. I never thought that,” she replied. Elain stood, and Lucien did too, though he didn’t move until she took that first step. Relax. The scent of her was overwhelming, and for the first time he understood that she might feel the same. The thought made him half delirious.
Their fingers were separated, the little blue and white trap falling to the floor between them. Lucien didn’t know what to say.
“Thank you,” Elain finally offered, holding his gaze. Lucien’s heart took off at a gallop.
TW: This chapter begins trying to absolve Rhys of his bullshit via his Tragic Past with Amarantha, and that necessitates discussions of sexual assault.
Also, because this is the chapter where we start trying to absolve Rhys of his bullshit via his Tragic Past, it's also a hella long post, despite the shortness of the chapter. I have a lot to say, apparently. I make no apologies. I swear I didn't just want an excuse to rant about Jaime Lannister
We pick up just after dinner, with Feyre telling us all about how Jurian's name clangs through her for... some reason. The book really is treating this as if it's so very Dramatic and Bad, when mostly it's just baffling. Not just bringing him back at all, but also why Feyre cares so much. So far as she knows, he's some human guy who died however long ago the war was, fighting on the side of humans, and also Amarantha had personal beef with him. His name doesn't (well, shouldn't) have any meaning to her beyond that.
...while Rhys and I went to the Prison—whatever that was—tomorrow.
Three guesses, Feyre. The name doesn't do much to mystify its purpose.
Rhys flies her back to the townhouse.
I quickly found I much preferred ascending, and couldn’t bring myself to watch for too long without feeling my dinner rise up. Not fear—just some reaction of my body.
So............. if it's not a fear reaction, then what reaction is it, Feyre? I get that sometimes our bodies just react to stimuli without any cognitive or emotional input from us, but. Unless he's doing loop-de-loops or rollercoaster plunges or something, your dinner shouldn't have any reason to move. You aren't the one doing the vigorous activity, after all. So it must be something else. You know, like fear. Or any of the other various distress emotions the book likes to show the severity of with vomiting.
Rhys makes an attempt to justify why his spyware is so wack and also not his fault.
[R]“This bond is … a living thing. An open channel between us, shaped by my powers, shaped … by what you needed when we made the bargain.”
“I needed not to be dead when I agreed.”
“You needed not to be alone.”
No, she needed to not be dead. She wasn't alone then. She was fighting to free her love and (in theory) her friends from the Spring Court. She was only alone at the Spring Court later, Rhys. You're just making up more bullshit to try and justify what you did. And even if we take this statement as true, your spyware only made her less alone on a technical level, Rhys, in that you had 24/7 access to her head. You never used it to, say, provide emotional support. Only to do things like use pain to try direct her answers in the trials (instead of just fucking telling her), or to plant thoughts like "the love of my life is in this random palace I've never seen" into her head. It's only ever been used for your own gratification. Stop gaslighting her.
You needed not to be alone… .
But what about him? Fifty years he’d been separated from his friends, his family …
No. Stop. A sad past doesn't make him any less of a dick. He's not the only one who suffered under Amarantha's rule, Feyre. Given that some of the other courts were having their children murdered (by him, no less), I'd argue that he didn't even suffer The Most.
I said, “You let Amarantha and the entire world think you rule and delight in a Court of Nightmares. It’s all a front—to keep what matters most safe.”
The city lights gilded his face. “I love my people, and my family. Do not think I wouldn’t become a monster to keep them protected.”
First of all, that's a bold statement to make, Feyre, given you've seen only one tiny part of the Night Court. And especially since, having spoken to people about the Illyrians and the Hewn City now, you know the Night Court is bigger than Velaris, and, based on what the others have said, you can infer that most of the Court isn't thrilled with the job Rhys is doing. You also know that the only part of the court that was protected was Velaris. He left everyone else to Amarantha's mercy.
“I love my people, and my family.
Bullshit. Like I just said, you abandoned the majority of them. They're all your people, Rhys, whether the book wants to admit it or not. You're a shit ruler, and in any book where the protagonist had any semblance of morals, the story would be about overthrowing you and your nepotistic regime.
“What was the cost?” I dared ask. “Of keeping this place secret and free?”
[...] “You know the cost already.”
Amarantha’s whore.
I think the choice to use "Amarantha's whore" to describe his position is very telling. Because, as we all know, he did more than just sleep with her. As I pointed out before, he also did things like murder children on her behalf. We saw him break people's minds last book, under her orders. He told her about Clare Beddor. It's clear he was more than just a bedslave. But the book doesn't want you to focus on those parts. Those parts don't make Rhysand a victim, see. And it desperately wants him to be a victim, because you can't blame victims for anything, right? If we accept that he was Amarantha's victim, well, anything he did under her orders can be absolved, right?
Rhys starts telling us all about it, but let's just get out of the way what the book wants us to think but outright refuses to say - Rhys was raped. He was a victim of sexual assault. Amarantha used the threat of violence against his loved ones to coerce him to be her servant, and part of being her servant included sexual favours. And, I'm kind of torn on the inclusion of this issue. On the one hand, it's incredibly rare to see male sexual assault victims in any media. At all. There's often at least allusions to female sexual assault victims - some are handled well, some really are not, but it's something that is very much in the public awareness. Not so for the men. And often, when it comes to representation, there's going to be an amount of shit representation we have to get through first, so that people are aware enough of the issue that they realise it's something that needs to be done properly, if that makes sense.
But..... dear god, do I think it was handled poorly here. For several reasons. Firstly, well, there's the obvious. The book never, ever, admits that Rhys was raped. It does not use that word. Nor does it refer to it as assault, or anything like that. In fact, if anything, it's trying to frame things as if it was all by Rhysand's own design:
"...So I decided that to keep her from asking questions about the people who mattered, I would be her whore.”
And honestly, it could work. Maybe Rhys is just coping with his lack of agency in the situation by claiming it was his decision. Maybe he saw an opportunity to offer himself to Amarantha in order to avoid violence and chose to take it, as opposed to choosing other ways to resolve the situation, and thus, while coerced, it was technically his decision in that regard. There's lots of ways it could work. But I strongly suspect that isn't why the book is doing this. I believe that it simply cannot imagine Rhysand (and men, more broadly) not being in control. It just can't. And thus, it phrases things so that even becoming a sex slave to the Big Bad is something that was a decision he made, instead of something that was forced upon him, completely beyond his control. It (perhaps unintentionally) words things to ensure he has agency in the matter.
In isolation, of course, it's certainly not impossible for such circumstances to occur - where the victim does, in fact, have an amount of agency in the situation. It doesn't make them any less of a victim. It doesn't make what happened to them any less horrible. However. This situation isn't in isolation. We live in a society where male victims of sexual assault are barely even acknowledged, let alone taken any sort of seriously, and this is especially true with respect to their agency in the situation. There's a subconscious assumption in our society that the man is always "in control," whether that's because he's physically stronger, or because of gender roles, or whatever. If he really didn't want it, he could have stopped it, right? That's how the thinking goes. And to further the non-isolation of this situation, it exists in a book where that power disparity between men and women is cranked up to eleven and played for fetish bait.
One of the (many) harmful things about rape is the destruction of and disregard for the victim's agency. But the book shields Rhysand from this. Again, it's not impossible that such a situation could occur. But it is very telling that it occurs for the male victim, and not for any of the (numerous) female victims the book likes to wave around at us. It does not hesitate to completely remove their agency from the situation. Nor does it explore this difference, or use it to make some sort of commentary, no. It's just there, as if it's matter-of-course that the man would retain some control over his situation. And that is a harmful thing to just leave hanging there.
But, even though it's still letting Rhysand be "in control" of the situation to an extent, make no mistake - it absolutely wants us to see him as the victim here. And, by all measures, he is. I'm not arguing that he isn't. He unquestionably is. What I want to discuss, however, is how the book uses his victimhood. Because it is absolutely only here for meta reasons, and not the good kind (which would again be things like making commentary or exploring how such a situation interacts with Rhysand as a character).
In novels, everything happens for a reason (or, at least, it should). Whether that reason is moving a plot, deepening a character, building the world out, whatever. Everything that the author chooses to include is there for a specific purpose (even if that purpose is just to pad the page count, or shock the audience, or because it sounds pretty. It's all still a purpose). This includes things like rape. Now, I want to make very clear that I'm not saying that real-world rape happens "for a reason" - that is obviously incredibly insulting to the victims, and the only "reason" it happens is because there's assholes who decide to do it. But when an author includes it in their work, it means they've sat down, thought about all the possible things they could have included, and have decided that yes, rape is what they're going to go with. They have an intention in mind when making this decision.
Sometimes, that intention is just something like "because it will be shocking" or "I want to make my villain more evil" or "I want to show my world is Dark and Gritty." This is called Gratuitous Rape, and is generally frowned upon. If your story is so boring that it needs a rape in order to "shock" the audience, that's a plot problem. If your villain's plot isn't evil enough on its own to make them a villain, you need to go back to the drawing board. If the only thing that's Dark and Gritty about your world is the rape, you need to re-evaluate if that's actually the kind of world you want to write. And so on.
Rhysand's case has a slightly bigger purpose than this (though I won't argue that it's being used to make Amarantha look more evil, that's more a bonus feature than the main point). In this book, the rape is being used to give Rhysand (in the book's eyes) unquestionable victim status, and to make him look oh-so-selfless for willingly suffering it. That is the primary aim of its inclusion. Rhysand did many terrible things last book, and this book wants to absolve him. Rather than do the character work necessary to pull it off (and we'll get to that in a bit - this isn't the only rant I've been holding off on for Rhysand), it instead makes him a rape victim - the kind of person the book thinks the audience cannot possibly blame for anything. Rape Is A Special Kind Of Evil, after all; in the book's mind, it follows that rape victims are a special kind of victim. Blameless. And, in Rhysand's case, selfless, because (it thinks) he suffered it to save others. You're not going to tell a rape victim that you think he's a piece of shit for the things he did while being raped, are you? If you do, then you are the one who is a piece of shit!
Hopefully, I don't need to point out why this is extremely insulting to actual rape victims.
And I am very confident in this assessment. Like I said, the book has already shielded Rhysand from the loss of his agency in the matter. It wants him to be a rape victim, but it doesn't want him to look "weak" for it. Instead, it wants the rape to show his "strength", to make it a "sacrifice" he made on behalf of others. Further, it never really explores the implications of this for his character. It brings it up just to let us know that it happened, and thus confer his victim status - it only ever mentions it again if it wants us to feel sorry for him. Not to understand how it impacted his character. Not to see him struggle to reconcile conflicting emotions about it within himself. Not to say anything meaningful about the issue itself, or anything like that. It's just a shortcut to absolution.
Indeed, the only part I remember that really mentions any potential impact is when Feyre and Rhys finally have sex - and Feyre suddenly decides that her being on top means that Rhys is "reclaiming" that from Amarantha (which.... ugh. We'll get to that when we get to it). And I remember this because it felt random af, because there had been no lead up to it, no indication that Rhys had any issues with sex or certain positions or anything. His victimhood is not explored in any way. In fact, it's largely absent from the book unless it wants us to pity him.
I could also see an argument that Rhys's sex slavery is also a bit of a fetishisation thing, or at least was meant to make him seem more "desirable" to the audience - of course the evil villain would want him as a sex slave, he's just so damn pretty, after all! But this is admittedly based more off gut feeling and the general vibe of Maas's works than any specific evidence in the text. And I want to make very clear that this is also an insulting reason to include rape in a story - real life rape has very little to do with the "desirability" of the victim, and to suggest otherwise is victim blaming in the extreme, and only serves to absolve the attacker of responsibility. It doesn't stop bad books from using it for this reason, though.
So, yes, in summary - while Rhys is unquestionably a victim of sexual assault (even if the book refuses to use those words), the reasons for the inclusion of this detail in the story are very icky, since it's mostly just there to leverage the victim status to absolve him of his other crimes. God, and I was hoping a short chapter would mean a short post for once.
But. Let's get back to analysing Rhys's bullshit, instead of meta bullshit.
“When [Amarantha] tricked me out of my powers and left the scraps, it was still more than the others. And I decided to use it to tap into the mind of every Night Court citizen she captured, and anyone who might know the truth. I made a web between all of them, actively controlling their minds every second of every day, every decade, to forget about Velaris, to forget about Mor, and Amren, and Cassian, and Azriel.
Not gonna lie, but "actively controlling the minds of every citizen for decades in order to make them forget very, very specific things" doesn't exactly sound like the kind of thing that can be done with just "scraps" of power. Why not concentrate all of those scraps into a single blow, and use it to explode Amarantha's head? You could explode random bit-character heads with just the scraps of the scraps, after all, we saw you do it last book, Rhys. Why not just do it to Amarantha?
"...I had only enough for one city—one place. I chose the one that had been hidden from history already.
Yes. The one that was already safe. In Crescent City, Bryce makes a lot of noise condemning others for protecting "already safe" parts of the city. Obviously, no such standard is going to be applied to Rhysand. He's a hero who had to make a Tough Choice; the other fae are poopyheads who don't like poor people. No argument will be made that Rhysand should have used his decades-of-direct-mind-control's-worth of "scraps" to protect anyone else, or to use it to explode Amarantha's head or anything. Nothing. The book will never frame him as anything but a saint for this.
Note, my main issue isn't that Rhysand didn't do something else with his power, per se. My main issue is with the book framing him as a hero for what he did choose to do. If it wanted him to be a hero, he should have chosen to do something actually heroic. If it wanted him to do this, it should be framing him very differently. Both of those situations are fine - what the book is giving us is not.
"...I chose, and now must live with the consequences of knowing there were more left outside who suffered.
Like those Illyrians you immediately hunted down and executed for "gleefully" joining up with Amarantha after their High Lord did? You don't get to claim pity points for other peoples' suffering when you don't actually give a fuck about the other people, Rhys.
"...Sea travel and merchant trading [to Velaris] were halted—sailors became farmers, working the earth around Velaris instead.
.....Rhys. If merchant boats can find your city, then it's not hidden. Pick one: hidden from everyone for thousands of years, or findable by trading boats at sea. You literally cannot have both.
He’d done all of that, had done such horrible things … done everything for his people, his friends. And the only piece of himself that he’d hidden and managed to keep her from tainting, destroying, even if it meant fifty years trapped in a cage of rock …
Correction: he did some things for some of his people and friends, and left the rest to Amarantha's mercy. He kept her from "tainting" that one thing at the cost of literally everyone else. This is not heroic behaviour. Or rather... hmm. It can be, I suppose, if the person doing it has literally no other options. But Rhysand says this:
"...And because my powers were focused on shielding them all, Feyre, I had very little to use against Amarantha.
Which insinuates that, if he didn't bother shielding the already-hidden city, he'd have been able to use all that power against Amarantha, potentially killing her and thus saving the entirety of Prythian, instead of just Velaris. And, honestly, this is a pretty easy fix. Have him try and fail to use his remaining power to kill Amarantha, and then, with the very last drops, he shields Velaris (ideally in the hope that his friends will continue the fight). That is a much more heroic situation. Instead, Rhys assessed his powers, and decided that shielding an already-safe city so his friends can sit on their asses there for however long Amarantha was around was the best use of it. He didn't even try anything else. That is not heroic at all. Or at least, it's not heroic enough to use to absolve him of all the heinous shit he did under Amarantha, both to Feyre directly and Prythian at large. Which is precisely where this is going. Ugh.
Those wings now flared wide. How many knew about those wings outside of Velaris or the Illyrian war-camps? Or had he wiped all memory of them from Prythian long before Amarantha?
You know, given the wings are basically the only sign of Rhys's mixed-race heritage, I can't help but read this as them being treated as something shameful/dangerous that needs to be hidden? Which is, ya know. Yikes. Especially since I'm sure there's situations where mixed-race people do feel the need to try and pass as one race or the other, for very legitimate reasons. But here, it's just being treated as yet another angst sparkle for Rhysand's hat. It's just so tragic that no one outside Velaris remembers his wings, you guys! Okay, but why? Why does he need to hide them? It's the fact that this is just dropped here as a matter of course and never explored beyond that that makes it sus. Like he should hide his wings because duh, of course being mixed-race should be a secret, and not that he should hide his wings because all the rest of Prythian is racist or something. We have no evidence that it would be received poorly. Except, ironically, by other members of his Inner Circle. They're the only ones we've seen be racist towards Illyrians so far.
.........you know what, actually. In the context of the whole "Night Court makes themselves look evil to everyone because Reasons but are actually secretly good" thing, I can't help but read it like..... you know in internet arguments, when one person accuses another of something bad (e.g. racism), and the accused person whips out the "well ackshually, I'm half black, so you're the racist" on them? Like that, except it's "Night Court evil!" "well ackshually, I'm half Illyrian, so that means you're just looking down on me!" I don't know. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it. This is the chapter for that, apparently. Because we're not done with over-analysing shit yet, oh no.
“It’s a shame,” I said, the words nearly gobbled up by the sound of the city music. “That others in Prythian don’t know. A shame that you let them think the worst.”
He took a step back, his wings beating the air like mighty drums. “As long as the people who matter most know the truth, I don’t care about the rest. Get some sleep.”
Hoo boy. It's time, I think. Time to look at Rhysand's "redemption" arc here and compare it to perhaps one of the finest redemption arcs I've read in a work of fiction. I am talking, of course, about Jaime Lannister, from A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones:
No I haven't been dying to make this argument since I started snarking ACOTAR wdym
Also, hella spoilers for ASoIaF, if that bothers you
Now, firstly, why do I want to compare these two? Well, it's for this line here, really:
“That others in Prythian don’t know. A shame that you let them think the worst.”
Because that's what the book thinks Rhys is doing here. Letting others think the worst of him in order to achieve some other noble goal. And, that's basically what ended up happening to Jaime Lannister, though the everyone-hating-him part wasn't strictly a conscious decision he made.
There's a lot of similar beats to how their characters unfold. They are presented to us first as unquestionable villains: Rhysand is the Big Bad's lackey and tortures, drugs and assaults Feyre Under the Mountain; Jaime is one of the haughty Lannisters, and throws a small child out of a window when said child caught him banging his twin sister. Neither of them are presented as good people. And, initially, we have no insight into their side of the story - no POV from them, and no sympathetic characters close enough to them to hear their side of things.
Outside of the specific initial events that cement them as a Bad Guy, both Rhysand and Jaime also have an infamous reputation in their respective worlds. Rhysand is the evil High Lord of the Night Court, where all sorts of nasty unspecified things happen. It's so nasty, in fact, that the first book's villain based her own court off it. Jaime is the evil Kingslayer, man without honour, and honour is Very Important in Westeros. As a member of the Kingsguard, he literally had one job, and so far as the rest of Westeros is concerned he (literally) stabbed the king he was meant to protect in the back in order to benefit himself/his own family. The lowest of the low.
Then, later on in their stories, we get a chance to hear from these villains. Feyre goes to live at the Night Court, and in so doing, becomes closer to Rhys. She hears his side of the story, and starts to realise (or so the book intends) that things were not what they seemed. Jaime ends up getting his own POV chapters, and in addition, is travelling with the honourable Brienne of Tarth, his foil in every way. In being in his head, we learn a lot about how he works, what he did, why he did it. And in learning these things, we realise that things were not as they seemed.
But there is a very, very big difference in how this aspect of the "redemption" arcs was executed. And.... well I mean honestly, if we're being completely fair, the difference is that SJM is a mediocre writer at best while GRRM is kind of in a league of his own for character writing, but let's talk about the specifics of how they wrote it for a bit - specifically, how they leverage their character's backstory to inform their actions (both the Tragic action and their actions now), and how they go about "redeeming" the character to the audience (if, indeed, that's what they even do).
Let's look at Jaime first, just because, well, there's actually stuff to talk about here. Like I said, Jaime is very solidly introduced to us as a villain. And even in his POVs initially, we're not immediately given reason to think he's any different to how we initially perceived him - he doesn't go on massive internal monologues to infodump his Tragic Past to us, for instance (looking at you, Hunt). In fact, we don't really learn much new stuff about the specifics of his Kingslaying event at all, at first because he's internalised shit to buggery and gah, seriously, when I say GRRM is great at character stuff I really mean it. We mostly just see him reacting to things as and when they happen, as people do. And we start to get a picture of a very cynical, bitter man.
But, we don't get the Tragic Backstory yet, and certainly not all in one go. Because to have impact, it's got to be set up correctly. Enter Brienne of Tarth. As I mentioned earlier, she's Jaime's foil in every way - he's the dashing man with a rich family and prestigious title, the golden child, the very image of what a knight should be, save for that one teensy detail where he's got shit for honour because he literally murdered his king. Brienne is an ugly woman from a minor family, the awkward, unwanted child, who struggles to fit in with how a Westerosi woman should be. She's more comfortable as a knight, but obviously doesn't fit in there either, because sexism. But she herself is perhaps the truest knight in Westeros, honourable and idealistic almost to the point of naivete. And, when she and Jaime have to travel together, well, they obviously butt heads.
This is important for revealing layers of Jaime's character to us before the Big Reveal. In his clashes with Brienne, we learn about things like how he (currently) views honour. He mocks her for her idealism and her oaths, and thinks a lot about how the world isn't really like that. But we also learn why he thinks that way. We learn about some earlier parts of his past, when he was a boy who did still believe in knighthood. We learn about certain events that challenged his idealism, fractured it. We saw how he tried his best despite this, but slowly, the cynicism kept creeping in. We see him react, sometimes viscerally, to the challenges Brienne levels at him, particularly around keeping oaths. It's clear to us that this idea of "true knighthood" gets to him... even if he tries to pretend it doesn't.
It all comes to a head in the bath scene. Here, Jaime tells Brienne (and us) the truth of what happened. And it completely reframes the whole event for us. Essentially, the king was obsessed with wildfire (very dangerous and explode-y stuff), and had hidden a bunch around the city, as part of a highly secret (and not entirely sane) plot. When the king realised he was losing the war, he ordered his pyromancer to ignite it and burn the city, killing everyone inside. Jaime had a choice: break his oath and kill the king (and the pyromancers) to stop this, or let everyone in the city (which at the time included his father and the Lannister army) die.
"Tell me, if your precious Renly commanded you to kill your own father, and stand aside while thousands of men, women and children burned alive, would you have done it? Would you have kept your oath then?"
And damn, if it doesn't make everything about his character fall into place. Like, yeah. How could you be anything but bitter and cynical, when what you see as your sole true deed of knighthood is viewed by everyone else as the single greatest moral failing a man could commit? When you were judged guilty before you could even open your mouth to explain, because who would take your word over that of the honourable Eddard Stark? When all the atrocities you stood by and allowed before in the name of protecting the king meant nothing? What would any of these honourable men have done in your place?
And, very, very importantly. None of this is said to absolve Jaime of the heinous shit he's done. He still threw a small child off a building, with the express aim of killing said child. He still banged his twin sister and had incest babies with her. He's still, by most measures of the thing, kind of a dick. But what it does do is show us that the situation is more complex than we imagined. What it does do is make us question the idea of honour in the setting, question the characters we knew and trusted up until then. What would Ned Stark have said, if his Honour-Before-Reason mindset wasn't a factor? What would Brienne have done if she were there? Even she doesn't know. There's no easy answer, in Westeros at least (honour isn't such a Big Deal in our world). But we understand, deeply and truly, why Jaime did what he did, and why he's turned out the way he has because of it. It isn't a "redemption" arc so much as it's just revealing more of the backstory, and giving us the full picture. The "redemption" (inasmuch as anyone in a crapsack world like Westeros can find redemption) part comes later on as he riffs off Brienne and starts trying to find his honour again and the bear pit and gaaaahhhhh don't get me started on those two seriously I don't think I love any fictional dynamic more than these two it's incredible. But even just this revelation makes Jaime so, so much more sympathetic to us. It catapulted him from a character I didn't like very much to one of my absolute favourites.
This, this is how you character conflict.
Now, contrast Rhysand. Ugh. Similar to Jaime, Rhysand is very solidly painted as a villain in his early appearances - he leaves a head in Tamlin's fountain, comes to gloat and make demands and mind-rape Feyre just to mock Tamlin, tortures and drugs and assaults Feyre on a nightly basis Under the Mountain, is the only High Lord who needs to get something in return in order to aid in resurrecting Feyre. There's very, very little cause to think he's a good guy.
But there's a certain thing that kind of undermines the impact of Rhysand's "redemption" arc right from the get-go. And that's that the book simply cannot commit to making him a villain, in our eyes or in Feyre's. This is a very important difference with Jaime - every other POV we've had until then was thoroughly convinced of his villainy, and framed him accordingly. But for Rhysand? His very first scene is him saving Feyre from rape, for no benefit, immediate or later made apparent, to himself - straight away, we can surmise that he's more than he seems and redemption will be imminent. The surprise is ruined. This isn't helped by the tail end of the first book/opening of this book either, where Feyre starts talking about how he "wasn't quite an enemy" and such. The book is already tripping over itself to assure us that he isn't really a bad guy, all while we've gotten nothing from Rhysand himself. Nothing that we know about him has changed, we've learned nothing new, the book is just insisting he's not an enemy now for some reason.
Next, the build-up to the reveal, or lack thereof, in this case. We get an entire book (well. It's one book that was split in two bc it was too long, and we get the entire first half) of Jaime POVs before we get the Big Reveal. In that time, we're learning how he works, how he thinks, what pushes his buttons. In ACOMAF, however, we are... just shy of 30% of the way through the book. In that time, we haven't learned a whole lot new about Rhysand's perspective on things - we've mostly just watched him kidnap and manipulate Feyre, while her narration insists that he's actually not bad, despite a severe lack of evidence in the book to support this, apart from her assertions (which may or may not have been planted in her head by Rhysand himself, remember. We have seen evidence of that happeninng, especially in the previous book).
The Big Reveal, so far as the book is concerned, is this: Velaris exists, and has just been hidden for thousands of years, and Rhys decided to be Amarantha's servant to keep it hidden. But you know what's missing from all this? Why the fuck we're supposed to care that Rhys was willing to become a sex slave to save this one (allegedly) special city. We know why we're meant to care about Jaime's Kingslayer reveal. We've spent two and a half chonky books watching him be spat on for being the Kingslayer, watching every character and their dog call him honourless for it. In the third book, we learn how that's affected him, learned how he once believed in honour and such himself. We understand why the Reveal is important, because it's very, very obvious to us how that event got him to where he is today. How it fits into the evolution of his character, how he's desperately trying (and failing) to use it as a final weapon to cling onto his cynical worldview in the face of Brienne's idealism, at the same time as trying to use it to prove to her that he's not the honourless scum she thinks he is. The whole shebang.
But what do we know about Rhysand, at this point? Fuck all. Why is it important that he decided to be Amarantha's slave? What did it change or reveal about him as a character? Well, nothing, really. He was a certain way before that (asshole that the book wants us to think is a good guy on dubious grounds), and he's the same after it. Does it change how we perceive the title of "Amarantha's whore?" Again, not really. Before, we understood it to mean that he was the bad guy's sex slave; now, we understand it to mean that he made himself the bad guy's sex slave so she maybe wouldn't go digging around about Velaris. Was Velaris actually in danger? Who knows. Rhys says it was, but it had also remained hidden for thousands of years before that, and the bad guy didn't even know it existed. It's not like she'd hidden bombs under it and was ordering them to be exploded right in front of him or something. It's a hypothetical, maybe-one-day danger, maybe, if the bad guy can find the city that has been hidden for thousands of years, or even realises there's a city to look for in the first place. What are the stakes? Jaime's are clear - thousands and thousands of lives, or his honour. Rhysand's are... less so. What are the stakes? The book wants you to think it's Velaris, but remember, Amarantha had no idea that Velaris existed. The stakes are "Amarantha might potentially be motivated to search for Rhys's loved ones if she feels the need to, and they are in Velaris" and the cost of mitigating this stake is "literally the entire rest of the Night Court (and Prythian) being under her sway, and Rhysand is a sex slave."
And unlike Jaime's honour, as I said earlier, the whole "Rhysand is a sex slave" thing is never really explored. We learn, very thoroughly, and from many different perspectives, what the idea of honour means to Jaime. How he sees it, how everyone else in his world sees it, how much it matters to different people. But what do we do with Rhys's sex slavery? What does it mean, to him, to Prythian? What does sex slavery mean in general in this world? And, sadly, the answer is "not much." We presume it's bad because it's bad in our world, but the book says very, very little about the whole thing. It's cheap pity. That's all it is. The situation is no more or less complex than that, and the book is utterly uninterested in changing this.
So, in conclusion. Rhysand does not have a redemption arc. The book thinks he does, but he doesn't. Nothing about his Big Reveal changes anything about his character - before it, we understand him to be evil-but-totally-acutally-not-so-bad (allegedly), and after it, we understand more or less the same. His Reveal exists just to be revealed. It isn't explored. The ideas it brings aren't played with. It doesn't give us an insight into him or the world he lives in. It isn't a smaller piece of the larger puzzle of his character, that explains why he is how he is now. His attitudes and actions after the event are no different to how they were before, or even during it. It's just used to score him cheap pity points so we can brush all the rest of the shit he's done under the rug. That's it. It's not an arc - it's an excuse.
Anyway, thank you for coming to my ted talk.
I wish I could say that was the end of the post, but we're barely halfway through this chapter. It just happened to hit two of my biggest rant buttons already. Specifically, ones that I'd been sitting on since I started snarking this series. Ah, well.
Anyway, we scene break into Feyre having a nightmare about Amarantha. And this nightmare is just a pretext for another scene break where Rhys wakes her up, so we can show that he's so much Better than Tamlin because of it.
“FEYRE.”
The voice was at once the night and the dawn and the stars and the earth, and every inch of my body calmed at the primal dominance in it.
God, shut the actual fuck up. I reread some GRRM for my above rant, you're going to have to write a hell of a lot better than that if you want me to believe shit.
Anyway, yes, Rhysand wakes her up, and it seems Feyre summoned flame claws in her sleep and shredded the bedsheets. She runs to the toilet and throws up, because there is exactly one way to respond to distress in this book. But, it's okay! Rhysand is there to hold back her hair!
“Breathe,” Rhys said. “Imagine them winking out like candles, one by one.”
......imagine what winking out like candles, Rhys? She's upchucking in the toilet atm.
Rhys decides that now is the perfect time to say that he sometimes imagines if it was Cassian or Azriel in his place with Amarantha, and how awful he'd feel if he failed them like that.
His fingers were gentle, but firm where he’d fisted them in my hair. “You never failed them,” I rasped.
“I did … horrible things to ensure that.” Those violet eyes near-glowed in the dim light.
“So did I.” My sweat clung like blood—the blood of those two faeries—
Yeahh, I feel like they're not quite the same thing, Feyre. Killing two faeries to save your love and his whole court =/= condemning two-thirds of your court and all the rest of Prythian on the off-chance that the bad guy might find your special city no one's found for thousands of years. Remember, he said he didn't have enough power to fight Amarantha because he used it to mind-control everyone who knew about Velaris for decades. That was a choice he made, to spend his power that way, knowing what the consequences for everyone else would be.
Anyway, she goes back to bed, wakes up later, and we time skip to... fucking somewhere, I guess. A grassy hill somewhere. Rhys is with her, of course.
...clothed in what I could only assume were Illyrian fighting leathers, based on what Cassian and Azriel had worn the night before.
Yes, people often wear their fighting clothes to dinner, after all. Perfectly natural assumption. And she didn't even need to make it, she could have just asked what the clothes were and been told.
If his attire hadn’t told me enough about what we might be facing today—if my own, similar attire hadn’t told me enough—
Because Rhysand is Better than Tamlin, and lets Feyre wear fighting clothes and go to dangerous places even though she's had 0 training yet, and is still in a very shaky state of mind.
Apparently, Rhys was writing a request to visit the Summer Court before, and it distracted Feyre so much (for a whole hour!) that she didn't think to ask wtf they're doing now. I don't even know. His handwriting is just that pretty, I guess.
Not that Rhys had really bothered explaining why he wanted to visit the Summer Court beyond “improving diplomatic relations.”
When Tamlin doesn't explain stuff, he's the devil. But it's fine when Rhys does. Because *mumble mumble* uhhh idk he's a feminist and Always Feyre's Choice, or something.
Feyre asks where they are.
“On an island in the heart of the Western Isles,” Rhysand said, staring up at the mammoth mountain. “And that,” he said, pointing to it, “is the Prison.”
There was nothing—no one around.
“I don’t see anything.”
Not the honking great mountain Rhys is pointing at, Feyre? Are you blind?
Anyway, yes, this is the Prison, and it's in the mountain.
Go inside—inside the stone, under another mountain—
Hmm, yes, this does seem like a bit of an oversight on Rhys's part, given that 99% of Feyre's trauma took place Under a Mountain. Why did he insist on her coming here, then? This is why I can't take it seriously when the book tries to have "cute" scenes where he "helps" her with her trauma, like the nightmare-waking scene just before - it turns around and does shit like this right after, and I just cannot believe that Rhysand actually gives a fuck about not traumatising her further. He clearly doesn't. He didn't even warn her they'd be going Under a Mountain until they were there already, so she couldn't make an informed decision about whether she actually wanted to go in the first place. Manipulative in the extreme. Yes, even if he concedes when she says she wants to go back. It doesn't change the fact that he deliberately deprived her of the key information she needed to make her choice until after they'd gotten there already. Like he's hoping for sunk cost/inertia to get what he wants even though he knows she'd have said no if she knew the whole picture from the start.
I didn’t move. “I—” The word lodged in my throat. Go under another mountain—
“It helps the panic,” he said quietly, “to remind myself that I got out. That we all got out.”
Great. Glad that works for you, Rhys. Is there a reason you decided to see if it'd work for Feyre without even asking her first? And no, him asking at dinner if she wanted to go to the Prison doesn't count. He didn't tell her it would be mountain trauma therapy. That's kind of an important omission.
[R]“We got out. And it might happen again if we don’t go inside.”
Sure. Maybe. But there's no real reason that Feyre has to go there, specifically. Only the supposition that maybe the prisoners in there will agree to talk to her because she's the uberspecial protagonist, and we need some pretext to take the POV camera with her.
But, Feyre can't do it, and Rhys takes her back to Velaris, and then the chapter ends. Finally. It really wasn't that long, I swear, I was just ranting more than usual.
And no, I don't think this makes Rhys a gentleman. The only reason she "has" to go to the Prison is based on their guesses that maybe the monsters will be more inclined to speak to her, for some reason. It could easily just be Rhysand trying to engineer ways to show off how considerate he is by putting her in situations that will obviously traumatise her, just so he can oh-so-generously rescue her from them. You'll have to do a lot better than that, book.
Willabeth are generally underrated imo but their eroticism was underrated af. Maybe it's because their eroticism is also very angst coded? But to me that makes it more delicious? 24/7 aching for each other emotionally, spiritually and physically.
But to me that makes it more delicious? 24/7 aching for each other emotionally, spiritually and physically.
100% agree. I am with you there. They are actually incredibly horny
because one of Elizabeth's primary objectives throughout the last two movies, particularly DMC, is to jump Will's bones
like, she talks about it in front of her father
but because the horniness is entwined with marriage
and because of the sweeping gestures and romance of it all
it gets overlooked by people whereas I, like you, think it amplifies it because it's aching, it's yearning, it's burning, it's legit passion
because, sure, there's this
but like, even before we get there, how can you look at this
how can you look at this
and not be like, this is one of the sluttiest scenes I've ever seen.
One of the things I love about the og POTC trilogy is how you can catch so many details you never noticed before on every subsequent rewatch. Any time I think I've picked up on everything I'm proven wrong, and I think it's especially true for the 2nd and 3rd movies. So here's a collection of more things I noticed on my most recent rewatch of AWE:
-AWE has always been my favorite of the first 3 films, and I think a strong case can be made for it actually being the best one, although most people usually give that designation to COTB. There's several reasons for this, but I think the most important one is that it takes the story beyond its adventure roots and does something truly profound with it. This is a pirate movie that is not actually about pirates. It's instead about the human drive to fight for and defend our freedom, filtered through the lens of a fantasy adventure involving pirates. The entire film is packed with references to this theme right from the opening scene. This alone I think makes it timeless as opposed to a product of its time, because there is no day and age where that theme will not be relevant.
-There is a fascinating parallel between Beckett and Elizabeth that especially sticks out in this movie. We know Beckett has read up on pirate lore just as much as Elizabeth has, and they both have decent working knowledge of it despite initially being outsiders to that world. The difference between them, though, is how they use that knowledge. Beckett seeks to use it so that he can control and obliterate the pirates, while Elizabeth, despite her repeated insistence that she's "had it with pirates," ultimately uses it to understand them and integrate into their way of life. Beckett becomes their number one adversary, while Elizabeth literally becomes their king and leader.
-I consider the deleted scene where Weatherby Swann tries to stab Davy's heart canon; I don't think it should have been cut out of the film. It adds so much context to why Beckett had him killed, and it fleshes out Norrington's character more in a way that I think was needed before his death. It's very obvious by the end of that scene that Norrington, despite having lived his life following orders (as Beckett himself points out), harbors great disdain for Beckett and his methods. Norrington's flaw in this film is at first assuming that the system he has dedicated his life to serving still upholds the honorable ideals and and values he believes in. This is the scene where we see doubt start to creep in about what he's really serving. There is a part of him that is beginning to realize that his ideals and the people/institution he works for no longer align, which then sets up his eventual turn later on in the film.
-Which leads me to his death. Yes, I hate it because I love him and he's my favorite character. But I also kind of love it because of what it implies. Norrington has spent his life doing what Beckett says he always does: obey. But prior to his death and following the revelation about Weatherby's murder, his "obey without question" mentality finally breaks. When he sets Elizabeth and the pirates free, he is disobeying direct orders for the first time. This is because he's realized that following orders does not always equal doing the right thing, especially when those giving the orders are doing so out of selfishness, pride, and cruelty meant to control the lives of others and take away their freedom. He finally recognizes that doing the right thing sometimes requires rebelling against the established order rather than adhering to it, and when he stabs Davy rather than accept his offer to serve on the Dutchman, that's his final act of rebellion. While I do think there may have been a way to let him live while still giving him this character development (lord knows there's plenty of fanfics to prove this, including my own lol) I love the fact that when he dies, he dies a free man. He is neither a slave to Beckett's greed nor a slave to Davy's cruelty. He's arguably not even a slave to death, because he greets it with humble acceptance rather than fear.
-When Barbossa is giving his speech to the Brethren Court, the camera focuses on Elizabeth during the bit about taming the seas with "the sweat of our brows and the strength of our backs." She later borrows this phrase for her "Hoist the Colors" speech prior to the final battle, and the camera then focuses on Barbossa while she's saying it.
-Jack choosing to sacrifice his shot at immortality to save Will's life has always been one of my favorite parts of the movie. One of the things I realized about it this time is that it connects back to yet another deleted bit where he tells Beckett "people aren't cargo, mate" during their first confrontation. If you know the lore, this is, of course, referencing how Jack freed a slave ship in the past, which Beckett punished him for by branding him a pirate. Jack has always valued his own freedom, but beyond that I think he just values freedom in general. His backstory is proof of that. I think that thanks to his past experiences, in that moment before he has Will stab Davy's heart, he's reminded that while immortality would technically buy him the freedom he wants for himself, personal freedom isn't worth it if it comes at the expense of innocent people's lives.
-I've noticed this before, but I have to point out again how much I love the foreshadowing of Will becoming Captain of the Dutchman, and the parallel between him and Elizabeth and Davy and Calypso. The camera almost always focuses on him when the heart is being mentioned, and Tia Dalma is usually hovering in the background like she knows what his fate is going going to be. The camera also focuses often on Will and Elizabeth together when Davy and Calypso are mentioned, further establishing the parallel. Although they go through a rough patch where they doubt their trust in one another, they're eventually able to rebuild it in a way their predecessors never could. They come together as one while Davy and Calypso tore each other apart. They embody loyalty while Davy and Calypso embody betrayal.
Anyway I'm running out of space but I've said it before and I'll say it again: the writing in the first 3 films was more brilliant than we give it credit for and I think that brilliance really shines in the 3rd one.
Hey sorry to disturb but what petition are you talking about? What did they do to Chloe?
Not disturbing me! Chloe Walsh announced that they’re making a tv show about boys of tommen. Fans are not happy and have actually made and started signing a petition to get the show canceled. They are insisting it won’t be good, that they’ll mess up the cast, and that there’s no way to fit everything into a tv show. I think this has gone way too far and fans need to take a step back. Chloe herself is working on this project and people saying to cancel it is crazy. Signing a petition to have her project canceled while also demanding more books is crazy behavior.
I’m sorry what??? That’s so sad. There are literally dozens of book adaptations both in the works and already released- why would boys of Tommen be any different? Imagine being an author, working your ass off to churn out amazing books and when you get a chance to have them adapted, your fandom actively hates on you for it.
Yes there is a chance it wouldn’t be cast well. Yes they might cut out some scenes . But again isn’t that an ever present risk with every single book-to-screen adaptation?
Boys of Tommen helped me a lot mainly because of the excellent way it portrays grief, abuse, addiction, disorders etc. Considering the fact that TV shows are more popular than their books, this might be the absolute best thing for everyone right now.
Random ask but isn’t a mistress someone you have sex/ a relationship with while you’re married?? So wouldn’t Siena be Anthony’s ex- paramour not his mistress????
