manonelide - Tumblr blog

[manonelide]

Alien is 10000% objectively worse than Faerug. But Faerug just has a bad habit of pissing me off on a personal level.

it’s such a low bar to hurdle but yeah alien has faerug beat by a mile. i mean one of the main reasons for that is bc faerug hasn’t contemplated colonialism. it could certainly still happen, since faerug has an ego the size of riceman’s peen (if we’re going by the way stans praise it) and would obviously want to become an empress, too. 

i was thinking today how odd faerug acts when she has money. like, she didn’t grow up with wealth (her mom died when she was, what, seven? and all the money lost shortly thereafter?), so the way she is suddenly so frivolous with it (while taking handouts from poor people in Velaris) just goes to show that sj/m has no goddamn clue about what it really is to be poor, bc even when you get money again, all you think about is literally hording it, feeling guilty over buying a goddamn lemonade to drink while shopping, and going out of your way to help people who need it (which is why faerug not paying the people for the art studio makes her a piece of trash). 

like everything else, sj/m just wanted that for the aesthetic. 

[manonelide]

The whole thing with how sjm wrote money and fwyre’s reaction to it can be explained by the fact that sjm has NEVER struggled for money. Ever. She grew up in Ny with wealthy parents - moms a judge, father a lawyer. She went to private schools. In college and after, her parents and her boyfriend/now hubby paid her bills so she could write. She had like, one job post college for a hot second and then got laid off. But she’s never wondered where her rent $ will come from. Or her next meal. (1/2)

(2/2) and this is fact - all this mentioned in a podcast she did in 2016 (mashable?) and other sources I have. With her advances and royalties from her books, she’s always had funds to do what she wants, so her writing about fryer being poor while sjm sits in her $3 million home in pa and drives her Porsche is absurd.

tbh i’ll never understand why sj/m wants to write about poor people. with how conceited she is, it stands to reason that she’d want to write about the “good things” in life (champagne, caviar, whatever the hell else rich people spend their money on), but i guess it just goes to show what her idea of conflict is: which boy do i bone? what do i do with all this money? (it’s interesting you have sources about this!) 

and it’s absurdly clear that sj/m hasn’t once ever spoken to an actual poor person. had she, she might realize the woman giving faerug the art studio and refusing money is one of the stupidest and most unrealistic things in the books (and that is really saying something). 

[manonelide]

Just look at her skin, it's just as white as her hair. Like, I genuinely don't understand. Alien is supposed to be all fire and warmth and what not, but she's depicted kinda like she were the Snow Queen or smth, and it just pisses me off so much. If that was Manon on the cover, it'd have been understandable, but it's not. Like, we get it, Sjm, Alien is not a woc, you needn't make her pale as a ghost to drive your point home. Sorry for the rant :)) but this annoys me since book 1 in the series

bahahaha i was gonna say the same thing: alien is so white just in case we accidentally mistake her for a WOC. and it’s gonna look even whiter bc the yellow background is going to be gold foil (CAN YOU SAY TACKY?) and i just…

green and gold, sj/m? really? she really should’ve made the final cover terrasen’s cover since alien’s been wanking on and on about it almost from day 1. (literally. that passage i shared from a stan claiming foreshadowing is from tab. it was literally from day 1.)

it’s so ugly that it’s almost humorous that sj/m said (in her newsletter, which i haven’t finished reading yet) that it’s her favorite cover of the series. mine, personally, was q0s bc in that she’s actually wearing realistic armor and also has meat on her bones (as all soldiers must, even archers. archers were fucking buff, man, bc medieval bows were unwieldy and huge).

but the covers have always been more or less ugly, so, again, consistency is key in sj/ms mind. 

[manonelide]

DID I CALL IT OR DID I CALL IT

I CALLED IT

[manonelide]

I just saw a stan post about Alien possibly being pregnant bc she said in E/oS she wasn't taking a contraception tonic and the stan had a theory that since a heir of Mala had to die according to the prophecy, then maybe Alien's baby could die when she forges the lock or whatever, and I honestly want to scream!!! This is so disgusting! Why are stans like that?? Just why?? I wanna laugh bc Mess clearly can't kill off any of her faves, but stans and their stupid theories are just vile at this point

OMFG WHAT

I mean, I remember people theorizing that Alien was gonna get pregnant after E0S because of the fact that SJ/M never mentioned a contraception method, but I’m fairly certain that’s just because SJ/M’s fans pay attention way more to what she writes than she does. Plus, she only cares about sex positivity so far as it proves her characters are aggressively straight rather than showcasing safe and realistic sex. I think it’s really likely that SJ/M will write a ten-years-later epilogue where every Feisty Woman is married to their Territorial Male and they all have fifteen kids, but I don’t think Alien will become pregnant over the main timeline of K0A. I don’t know whether SJ/M will go down the pregnancy route because on the one hand she might think pregnancy means a woman is less attractive and therefore less available for fae porn, but also pregnancy for her might mean her women can fulfill their “natural” role. Also, she’s established that witchlings and fae children are extremely rare, but she’s contradicted her own rules countless times before so who knows?

All that said, it’s one thing for Alien to be pregnant, but it’s a whole other thing for her to usE A BABY TO FORGE THE LOCK. What the actual fuckkkkkkk how do stans come up with this? They’re just reducing Alien to a baby machine and reducing her potential baby to an object that can be used to save their kween. I highly doubt this theory will be the way things pan out, but it’s still a testament to SJ/M’s lack of self-awareness/consideration of implications that her writing makes stans think in such objectifying ways.

[manonelide]

Tbh I don’t understand why nobody has started some kind of petition against Bloomsbury to stop marketing overly explicit books to young children. Like yes children should know about sex because it is healthy and a part of life but SJM books draw towards a line that is dangerous & her books are misleading. If nobody else is allowed to do this in YA why should Bloomsbury be given a free pass? I’m tired of walking into children sections & seeing her books lined up next to HP & Percy Jackson

Like I mean there is a difference between writing a sex scene where the character had sex and everything is described and a character having sex and then coming to the thought of their child. Like Bloomsbury needs to be dragged because they are okaying this kind of work.

the sex sj/m includes isn’t healthy, and i think that’s a key difference between what sj/m sets out to do (support sex positivity) and what appears on the page (sj/m’s fetishes and kinks). and she gets paid and praised for it. and it’s not that bloomsbury is given a free pass: it’s that sj/m is given a free pass. i’ve spoken before how i know someone at bloomsbury who was told to remove the word “breasts” for her book in a non-sexual instance (”breastband”, the fantasy equivalent to a bra). so bloomsbury is happy to make other authors follow their guidelines, but sj/m…nope. she is the subject of the “i do what i want” card meme except she actually gets to do what she wants. 

no matter how much i try to make sense of it, i just can’t wrap my head around it. that bloomsbury is okay with putting these books on shelves and telling kids who follow them to pick up these books. so either no one at bloomsbury reads the books anymore, or they all love the sex/are stans themselves, or think that sj/m’s idea of sex positivity is truly what sex positivity is. 

but there is literally nothing positive about the sex sj/m includes. it’s dirty (not in a good way! dirty bc they do it while flying and with paint in vaginas and sand in vaginas), it’s horribly written, it’s overly violent, it occurs between teenage girls and centuries-old men, it’s kinky (which, again, isn’t bad! but it does not belong in a ya series), it’s too long, it’s all her characters think about, it can literally be scented on people…i could go on, but you get my point. 

when ac0maf came out, i had actually heard of many nation-wide librarians speaking up about how upset they were that books with such explicit sex was shelved and marketed in ya. i don’t know what came of that, but…if people are going to demand books that discuss racism or rape or even goddamn mental health are going to be banned from school libraries, the fact that sj/m’s books are not banned (so i’ve heard–i’d love to know if anyone has heard of that!) is downright despicable and really drives home the hypocrisy that exists in adult readers of ya, parents of teenagers, and the ya publishing industry. 

[manonelide]

After a court of frost and stopit *credit to insanereader * I feel so dum for not seeing the problematicness of the acotar books ( I saw in tog but for some reason tot in acotar )

InsaneReader is ICONIQUE for that!!

And don’t feel dumb! ~Problematic~ stuff only feels obvious after the fact or if you read/watch things with a certain lens. It’s all purposely hidden so we gradually come to accept stuff like, for example, women always being antagonistic toward other in fiction because it’s the norm. Plus, certain issues can get really subjective when we’re talking about individual thresholds of problematic representation, cultural appropriation, and other related topics because #intersectionality. That’s what I like about fandom and specifically antis because everyone looks at media with a different perspective, experience, or skillset they use to point out observations I never would’ve made. I certainly don’t catch every problematic thing about every show/book I enjoy, but I’m hyperaware of SJ/M’s nonsense because of this blog. The things I mostly look out for are the really big no-nos of rep (non-diverse cast, killing women/POC for man/whitepain, healing a disabled character (especially if done with magic or advanced sci-fi technology), women fighting and being “not like other girls,” token LGBTQ/POC who more often than not gets randomly and violently killed, “slutty”/aggressive LGBTQ character, evil sex worker, exclusively irrational/emotional women and taciturn/logical men, stick-thin white people as the only form of beauty, etc). SJ/M has done pretty much all of those things, so that’s why in my mind there’s a glaring red “BAAAAAAAAD” sign surrounding her books.

[manonelide]

I feel like the book tries to build up Captain of The Guard to be such a badass title for kale but realistically...he’s a mall cop

SDFKLAFJ;SAFD ITS TRUE AND YOU SHOULD SAY IT

[manonelide]

Hhhhh more rambling time about SJM’s homophobia. So as my amazing bro and best friend Lori (seriesoffailure) informed me, bc I’ve not read TOG, Darrow is gay. You know Darrow? The one sane man who calls Alien out for being an unprepared, petulant child who doesn’t deserve to sit on the throne? He’s got a boyfriend (oh excuse me LOVERRRR) and was the lover of one of the former kings of Terrasen (Aelin’s Uncle) THE ONE GUY WHO DOESNT KISS AELIN’S ASS IS A CRUSTY OLD GAY MAN I FUCKFKFKFJDJD

that’s his wiki (wiki queen is back, yo). at least his “boyfriend” has a name, but seriously–if being gay isn’t a crime in the t0g world, why the fuck aren’t all these (jfc “all these” there’s like three) gay people married? why are they all relegated to “lover” or “boyfriend” status? 

i mean i know why, but still, the questions are there and they’re goddamn uncomfortable. and why didn’t aedion stay with his “lover”, for that matter? fucking hell, he doesn’t even get a name…and yet he is aedion’s second in command? the goddamn second in command doesn’t get a name. how much you wanna bet it’s bc this second in command is gay (not bi, so there’s no chance of him getting with a ~female~ and thus earning a name)? 

some days sj/m’s rampant homophobia and blatant disregard for logic is too much for me to handle. 

[manonelide]

I’m just been thinking about acotar recently and the whole concept of the trials UtM confuses me especially when it was all just supposed to be about Tamlin’s “heart of stone” (which also doesn’t make a lot of sense). The trials were really spaced out and the magic system didn’t make any sense (why is Rhys still so powerful UtM and why is he scared of Tamlin trying to kill him?) There is so much to talk about but even with just trial 2: Rhys helping her (why can he do this), Lucien (whyyy) (1/2)

the whole concept of trial 2: I mean she literally goes from being chased by a death worm to solving rhymes (anti-climatic much?) The ending scene was also very reminiscent of the first Narnia movie, where Aslan kills the white witch (Tamlin turning into a beast and killing Amarantha). She literally throws Rhys to the side with ease and he’s supposed to be insanely powerful for a high lord and yet Tamlin can kill her just like that? CONFUSION I wish the magic system was more defined :/ (2/2)

Ahhhh omg don’t bring my precious Narnia into this, hahaha! I never drew that parallel, but I do see it now that you mention it. Too bad Jadis will always be 1000x more iconic than A/marantha.

So much of SJ/M’s magic system and characters and worldbuilding and plot wpigiownrhrw reminds me of that stupid quote from the G0T creators that they used to justify their show blatantly not making any sense: “Creatively it made sense to us, because we wanted it to happen.” D&D and SJ/M just write stuff because they want shocking events to surprise the audience, rather than building the characters, plot, and world around the story in a logical way.

I vaguely posted about the heart of stone thing a while back, and I still have so many questions that will never be addressed because SJ/M simply doesn’t care that her world makes zero sense. Why did Tom Lane have a heart of stone? Why does no one else have a stone heart? Is it like how L/ucien has a golden eye–did someone craft him the heart and implant it? If so, who? What kind of magical blacksmiths or sculptors exist in this world, and are they lesser fae or high fae? Or is the heart purely magical? I think it might’ve been stated in the book that the heart came with the curse, but if so, why? How does that impede him from completing the curse? How did she do that? Assuming high fae have the same anatomy as humans, how does he survive without a flesh heart? Why, if Faerug found out about Tom’s stone heart by eavesdropping on Tom and L/ucien, did she take the expression “heart of stone” literally if no one else has a heart of stone? Why was this NEVER ADDRESSED AGAIN? We only see a few instances of fae using magic in AC0TAR as well: when Tom glues Faerug to the table (ewww wtf. Also remember when magic was described as having a metallic tang? AND THEN THAT PART OF THE WORLDBUILDING WAS NEVER CONSISTENT AFTER LIKE THE FIRST ACT OF AC0TAR????), when Tom shapeshifts, C/alanmai (eeEWWW!!), and when Rice’s powers come into play. Why do the courts all have random powers? Like, what does shapeshifting have to do with spring, or mind-reading and magic bargains have to do with night, or fire have to do with autumn? Moving on to the trials: why do the trials exist in the first place? Why would A/marantha risk losing everything she built and not immediately kill Faerug? Why are the trials so inconsistent: battling a creature –> reading –> riddle and killing three fae? What are they supposed to be testing?  The magic system is so much no, I could honestly write a ten-page paper on how it doesn’t work.

Maybe if SJ/M had used the classic fae mythology throughout the book rather than using the fae label to make all her characters 500-year-old white fuckboys then she could’ve acted like A/marantha loved mischief and trickery, but literally all the exposition about the curse and the main villain comes in several hundred pages into the book in one giant block of infodump. Therefore, we have very little characterization of A/marantha and her motives. There’s no precedent for A/marantha’s behavior during the trials. A/marantha needs to die and Faerug needs to survive for the story to go on, so that’s what happens. A/marantha had potential to be a well-written villain. In the hands of a good writer, truly terrible people can be super compelling (i.e. Jaime from AS0IAF, Voldemort from HP), so if SJ/M had been willing to spend time on anything other than gearing Faerug toward hooking up with Rice, all of this could have made some sense rather than being a mish-mosh of events and abilities to create flimsy stakes for a flimsy character.

[manonelide]

You asked for a separate ask about it, so: Ramble about Amren’s age to me, Wiki Queen

you are an enabler, anon. i love you for it.  

Keep reading

[manonelide]

I agree with your last point that bringing otherworldly creatures just makes humans less scary and reduces them to nothing. For me humans be more scary than other worldy creatures. I mean just normal human without any powers can actually too be a very scary and awesome villain. When a human is motivated to do something nothing can stop them, or when they want to achieve something. Human mind is the most interesting and for me can make an much more awesome villain than demons or creatures.

YES. THIS. EXACTLY. especially when your entire premise is set up to fight for the downtrodden, to fight against the powers-that-be who have the authority over human lives. it’s something i’m actually working on while i revise a manuscript to pitch to my agent. in it, there was this otherworldly being (a god, so to speak) who inspired humans to join him through magic and promises of power. the entire reason i’m revising this aspect of that manuscript is bc of how i approach all my books now: creating mirrors to the real world and its bullshit. 

and sj/m had the opportunity to do that, too, with the king and his beliefs, ambitions, and dictatorial position. but in exorcising (or whatever the hell dorian and alien did at the end of q0s bc i don’t really remember how they freed the king) the king of the valg, and having the valg be the entire reason the king was evil in the first place, flattens any credibility the book might have had. (beyond that, it was a blatant ass-pull so sj/m could write more books, never mind the fact that the witch queen and maeve still existed. there was no reason whatsoever for sj/m to have the king as merely a vessel for violence.)

i was curious how sj/m described him, see if he was handsome (and thus worth “purifying” of all evil), but his wiki is kinda empty (Wiki Queen is at it again). which doesn’t surprise me, considering he doesn’t even have a name. and the rest of this is probably gonna go off-topic, but c’est la vie. 

so here’s the king: 

which i am not at all surprised about. nor am i surprised about duke perrington (and of course they’re both “large” bc sj/m knows only three body types: large, buff, and skinny.) 

and the above two perfectly mirror the following three, bc evil people are either big and ugly or thin and beautiful. and notice that the human evils are ugly, while the otherworldly evils are beautiful. once again, sj/m is as transparent as cling wrap. we get it, sj/m, otherworldly creatures–even evil ones–are inherently better than humans. we get it. you can stop now. please. 

tbh i shouldn’t have been surprised. i kinda am, but i shouldn’t have been. live and learn, kat. 

[manonelide]

i am confusion

I’m sorry what

[manonelide]

okay but let’s give it up for viviane, lady of the winter court who spent FIFTY YEARS DEFENDING THE ICE COURT. viviane DESERVES to be high lady. unlike feyre who only has a position of power because she was rhysand’s mate and he “loved” her.

[manonelide]

Tried to send this to sjm exposed but keep getting an error messag .SJM & Bloomsbury are making a show of charity without giving a dollar of profit to anyone. "Proceeds" means additional money they charge for the ticket. In other words, the readers pay and Blooms/sjm don't give a dime. Compare that to Marie Lu or Leigh Bardugo who donated 10% of their BOOK SALES from tours OUT OF THEIR OWN POCKETS to charity. Or all of the authors who donated to No Kids in Cages. That my friend is the real tea.

well i do have an anti sjm behavior tag! so i’m a good substitute, i think 😉

but wait, i’m confused…lemme go look this up bc i wanna know what you’re talking about. so here’s a couple screenshots from her instagram post:

so it does sound like she’ll be donating stuff to charity, but for the fans to have to cover the goddamn venue???? that’s one of the most fucked up things i’ve ever seen an author do jesus christ. if they can’t afford to pay for a venue, they SHOULD NOT BE SENDING HER ON A TOUR JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. and it’s not like they’re short of money when it comes to sj/m!!!!

 i can’t. i physically can’t. 

[manonelide]

I can’t deal with this lmao! Mess just announced her tour dates for k0a and none of them is in a bookstore they’re all in theaters and ohhh the vip ticket is almost$50 because it includes one (1) personalized book, tote back and poster. I went to sabaa tahir and Renee ahdieh’s book signing last month and they were personalizing multiple books and gave totes and art cards and signed poster for free! At this point idk if this is sad or funny

here’s another anon who said something similar! i figured i’d lump you two together since they were on the same topic ;)

She’s charging $50 VIP TICKETS for her events. Jfc help me understand why readers don’t see her and the Bloomsbury team as money cashing grubhounds.

they’re all…in…theatres…what the FUCK???? and she’s charging fifty goddamn dollars for ONE GODDAMN TICKET?!?!?!?!??!?!? V#J@IOC:WHXRUF W

I AM BECOME RAGE WHAT THE FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKkk SJ/M MEET ME IN THE GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING PIT AND BLOOMSBURY YOU’RE UP NEXT JESUS CHRIST

ahem

[manonelide]

true everyone’s making this a very complex thing when in fact... it isn’t that deep

Sarah j Maas at the office creating the KOA cover: “yes, and then we put the main character in the middle. She has blond hair and a sword.”

Random guy creating the covers for bloomsbury: “Like on the other covers?”

Sjm: “yes please”

Cover guy: “say no more”

Fandom, seeing long hair: