#and his narrative wasn't an absolute fucking creep fest

[flowerflamestars]

Hotter Take: If you think Rhysand and the IC are the good guys, you probably also think Dumbledore is cool and do not and will not acknowledge just how manipulative and shitty they are.

P.S: Azriel, hidden depths or just a slightly more insightful lapdog? Got into an argument when i said he probably doesn't have a personality

Correct and PERFECT TAKE. If you think they're fabulous you are also, 85% more likely to find Severus Snape noble and tragic.

AZRIEL!! Oh god, okay. I have three distinct thoughts on this:

1) He is...laughably without a personality. Like, I'm sorry, but S/JM has not effectively written a group dynamic that feels feasible/realistic/semi-allows everyone to be people since Queen of Shadows. Her books thrive on having a whole band of people together, but there is zero main character/side character balance.

Is part of that because he's The Scary Quiet One? yes, sure. No reason to be chatting up Feyre (who is a child!! god. B A B Y. I reread acomaf and I AM SEETHING but that is neither here nor there)? yeah probably.

which brings me to 2) Everything. Pretty much everything we (myself included, because writing him in Starlight was very fun) like about Az...isn't strictly canon.

It's canon-adjacent. We're filling the gaps because there is almost nothing but a sketched outline. And it works SO WELL- because Azriel, almost more than Rhysie himself, is a big sexy trope trap.

He's the Quiet One with the dry humor! the (we pretend) heart of gold! Longing! Service! Loyalty from the Shadows! He is a LITERAL CINDERELLA STORY. Darkly handsome but BLUSHING. Scarred gentle hands! Daddy issues!

It is right there for the taking.

3) it is right there for the taking and canon takes NONE OF IT.

Like. Azriel is almost better as a menacing background shadow because the second you interrogate...really, any part of his character, nothing makes sense. Nothing.

His story is predicated on pain, right? Horrible suffering until he could talk to darkness. Its almost like he can read minds. his gift is secrets. It is a journey of improbable survival.

But to get secrets out of people. He brutally tortures them??

Which, is made further redundant not just by his gifts...but the fact...that he serves not one, but two mind-readers???

Azriel is transparently traumatized by having been the one to find Morrigan dumped in Autumn, stripped and halfway to death. It fucked him up SO BAD- which makes complete and total sense considering that like...he comes from this brutal suffering, and this culture that not only wanted him dead, but his mother dead, one that we're given to understand (which we are NOT EVEN TOUCHING THE RACISM YET) seeks to harm women, and anyone different.

And then, instead of being someone safe for her, bonded by the fact that Az came for her, Az found her....Azriel spends five hundred years scaring her?

Azriel disobeys orders and sense to save Elain. We, without his POV, scrabble to dots to connect: Az, who will always come. Az, who cannot stand not to try. Who cannot handle the idea of her tortured, harmed-

And then canon give us his POV- and's like. She was mine. I'm going to duel her soul-bonded man and MURDER HIM?? Because i can do it better! I GET TO HURT HER.

What, and I cannot say this enough, the fuck.

Ignore all the potential, all the fanon, all the fun to be had: Azriel is a professional torturer with anger issues whose love interests are exclusively traumatized, vulnerable women.

(He is also. Incidentally. The most Illyrian-looking of the three Illyrian bros, and yes, this is so fucked up)

It's...not anything new. It's not even bad in an interesting way.

The peeks of possible personality get squashed, almost immediately, by the actual narrative! One jokey night drinking with Feyre because he is, you know, a person, does not cancel out that in THOUSANDS of pages he was so vague fans essentially...made up a whole man is shape.

And. I'm sorry, but even internally there's some hmm who is this character??? dissonance.

Mr. Trauma make me Weird About Women, sees emaciated, visibly hella bruised Nesta, and is like immediately: who hit you???

but then. When his 'brother' thinks its like...the funniest thing in the world that Nesta fell a height that left her IMMORTAL FAERY BODY still fucked up the next day...he doesn't care?

He's like hahaha Cas I'm here to make sure you keep it in your pants about the prisoner WINK WINK

but. One of the only clear character beats we HAVE about him is that Az is the renegade who will Free Every Woman in bondage. Morrigan, who probably has the most reason to have an unstinting opinion of Az, tells Feyre he was going to save her from SPRING

yall. I am not going to read the Az book, I'm sorry.