i think we can all agree (if no one agrees I agree with myself) that SJM is not that good of a writer. Like, yes, she managed to concoct a compelling selection of plot lines and characters we love but the amount of plot holes and "it is what it is and i'm giving you no explanation whatsoever" BAFFLES ME.
Maybe that's not as important to everyone else as it is to me, but a good writer weaves things together cohesively, in a way that it feels believable. And it doesn't require my blind faith and multiple suspensions of disbelief to make it work.
(which to me you do, btw) (so if you want to rewrite acotar i'm in)
I think the parallels with great britain and history in general we can let slide, considering all these places are fictional. But the way the fae has no advanced medicine (c-sections?) but has plumbing, modern fabric and canned goods drives me insane. It's just a logical failure. Because technologies aren't developed in a vaccuum, if you have technology for industrial-like production - you can't convince me canned food is artisanally made - there is no way your medicine is that archaic.
all of this to say that I love fanfic writers, cementing one plot hole at a time, one smutty fanfiction at a time. godly work.
- 🥐
‘(which to me you do, btw)’
😳😳☹️☹️🫂 thank you ☹️😭🫂🧡💛
Oh my gosh I tried looking up when the first c-section happened successfully in case it was a much later part of that swift period of development, but apparently the first recorded case of a successful caesarean section was around 1500 😭 so no excuses 😭😭
I’m almost kind of scared to know actual details about the Industrial Revolution like at what points different progressions were made because I feel like it might make the plot holes more glaring? I love acotar but please Sarah find a needle and thread and start stitching! 😭
‘you can't convince me canned food is artisanally made’
Maybe the cans are actually carefully carved out from rocks and then enchanted with magic to keep them functioning properly 😭
Honestly though when Feyre warmed the soup up on the stove in chapter 54 or somewhere near there in Acomaf I was a bit removed from the immersion 😭 like that’s a meal I make for myself occasionally what do you mean you’re doing that in a fantasy world??? No!! Where’s the plum wine and sugared tarts???
***go ahead and ignore this if you don’t want to talk about the political aspects of the books***
can we talk about the fact that sjm made a story in which ireland (hybern) colonized britain (prythian), under the control of a cruel queen????? like, she could have so easily flipped it so that prythian was ireland and hybern was britain, and it would have made so much more sense considering the long history between the english monarchy colonizing and tormenting ireland??? under the reign of cruel monarchs (sometimes even female monarchs like amarantha queen Victoria)??? like?? the story would have written itself!!!!
i know this would lead to problems with “the wall” since hyberns whole thing was they wanted access to humans to eat/torment or whatever, but couldn’t because the closest ones were in pythian below the wall, but honestly, i’ve hated the concept of the wall since i first read the books because it makes no sense. (sjm has a really bad habit of taking preexisting stories— fiction or nonfiction— flipping them on their heads, and calling them her own). if all humans live below the wall and all fae above the wall, then humans own the vast majority of land on their planet??
like, fae would basically just have northern europe, russia, canada, and greenland, whereas humans would have the entirety of africa, lower asia, middle east, australia, the us/mexico, and south america. aka where the bulk of the worlds resources exist. why on earth would the fae agree to that??? how would they have things like gold and all their precious jewels when both those things are predominantly mined in the US/africa and south america?
and don’t get me started on how they seem to have access to things like pre-canned food, indoor plumbing, and presumably spandex leggings, ALL products of the industrial revolution?? like it implies that there’s factories out there creating these things, yet there’s no mention of them??? or any other effects of the worlds semi-apparent industrial period??? the world building in these books is the bane of my existence.
i fucking hate the way sjm wrote these books, yet they still manage to eat away at my brain until all i can think of is azriels dick thighs
-🌁
Note: there’s a diagram below explaining what parts Great Britain, United Kingdom, British Isles, and Ireland refer to for anyone unfamiliar!
‘can we talk about the fact that sjm made a story in which ireland (hybern) colonized britain (prythian), under the control of a cruel queen?????’
RIGHT??? Can you imagine also how interesting the story might have been if Rhys’ court was the one set on ‘Ireland’ and Amarantha had been a queen from ‘England’?
Also the whole thing with Hybern being the one to cut off trade routes when I’m fairly certain that historically England was the one to ship out/take Ireland’s food that left them with potatoes, and then when the blight set in there was no food left for the people of Ireland which is how the Great Famine happened??? But SJM chose to write it so Hybern kind of caused his own people to starve? But also had enough food to feed soldiers and keep them ready for war? I really don’t think it was the best choice on her part 😐
(Also I saw a video a while back talking about how that part of history just isn’t really mentioned/taught in English schools which I think is true? I certainly never learned or even really heard about any of that in History class so my knowledge about it is a little iffy)
‘if all humans live below the wall and all fae above the wall, then humans own the vast majority of land on their planet??’
I suppose technically we don’t know what the rest of the world looks like? But with how the human lands seemed to be pretty cold it sounds like they’re even in the same position as the British Isles? And I can’t imagine the fae drawing borders that would leave them with so little land? The majority of which looks like it would be fairly cold and barren since it’s so north?
‘like, fae would basically just have northern europe, russia, canada, and greenland, whereas humans would have the entirety of africa, lower asia, middle east, australia, the us/mexico, and south america. aka where the bulk of the worlds resources exist.’
Haha I was actually just looking into this and was going to mention it but then saw you’d kindly already pointed it out!
I’m by no means great at or familiar with geography or history so I don’t think it stood out to me as much? But looking at a map it looks like most of the fae land would be ice and tundra? And I get magic could theoretically solve those problems, but they would still have little land comparatively?? Unless they haven’t yet discovered the rest of the world—in which case praying nobody attempts to get to the equivalent of India or tries to sail west and ‘discovers’ America 💀 Especially with how SJM mentioned the possibility of Rhys becoming High King. I would genuinely stop reading the books if she pulled something like that 😭
‘ how would they have things like gold and all their precious jewels when both those things are predominantly mined in the US/africa and south america?’
I guess we do assume then that perhaps the world expands beyond what little land of the continent we’ve been shown from the acotar maps? Maybe further east it’s more common for fae to trade with humans? Through the holes in the wall that were mentioned???
This is just making me realise how many plot holes there are 😭😭😭
