#and i would love to ramble more on how acotar being a romantic series instead of a romance would fix the plot structure So Much

[flat-neines]

I think it is another example of sjm doing things for aesthetics instead of actually telling a story or world building. Autumn court politics are constantly mentioned in context to lucien, to emphasize the tragedy of his character or the night court, to highlight thier competence and alleged "goodness" (see Morrigan's whole backstory). It works for the former, not so much for the latter. So the the stakes feel fake because outside of those 2 points autumn is as irrelevant as the other courts, rather than having a legitimate b/c plot to drive the myth arc of acotar forward.

The whole "look at this court/person/culture!they're sooooo backwards compared to us" narrative is really stupid too, cause it just makes the night court look worse than they canonically are. Cause it's one thing to be incredibly shitty, but another to be complete hypocrites too; especially when readers start picking up the suspect (zionist) ideologies the core cast of good guys.

On the eris being racist, I think people at least on the anti side of things are definitely aware of it but it feels asinine to highlight this for eris specifically, when:

1. The narrative of the series itself is already incredibly racist/misogynistic, focusing on the feelings of the oppressors, than the victims

2. Almost every character in the series is racist (passively and actively) or had said racist things even when it is ooc for them to say that (tamlin in war/sf looking at you)

This still circles back to sjm being a white woman who wants to write her wish fulfillment power fantasy but still being accredited as a fantasy giants like LeGuin, Tolkien, GRRM or even moebius despite lacking the same range as them. So she writes the whole autumn situation as this and makes analogues to SA or FGM or trafficking (wing clipping, the cauldron and the meat market) and have her characters (mostly the female characters or poc) be violently tortured/SA'd just to say "yes. I am a serious writer writing a serious story". Not because she wants to tell any of these stories, but because it's "exotic" and "dark" to make her sound more mature. It's absolutely juvenile and makes my blood boil.

Tl;dr: autumn (and other courts) situation feel weird cause they only exist to fulfill sjm power fantasy narrative over having plotlines themselves. Eris, like Nesta and Tamlin is a symptom not a cause.

Sometimes my brain will come up with stuff that I will think is canon, even though it blatantly contradicts canon, because it makes sense to me and then I will remember the actual canon and get mad, and then I forget the actual canon again until I remember again and get mad again in an endless cycle

One of those things is the fact that Lucien is not in fact magically the heir to both autumn and day but only to day. Because I keep thinking that the Lady of Autumn was the one with the highlord magic and then she had a child with Helion when he was highlord, ergo Lucien is the magical heir to both of 'their' courts which also explains why no one noticed that maybe there was something off with his magic because he did have the autumn fire magic after all, but then I remember that stupid bullshit about how women literally physically cant inherit the high lord magic and Im pretty sure the canonical explanation for the magic-thing is just that the LoA just has very strong magic, so that sucks

And its annoying to me because I feel like that would be a way jucier plotline. Like, i remember a few months ago seeing this post where someone showed a passage from one of the books and went "the other Vanserra brothers consider Lucien to be a serious threat for inheriting the throne 👀" and its like, well hes not, so who cares? Idk, i think part of it is just that Ive lost my ability to care about autumn court politics. I know a lot of people are excited for that when it comes to the elain book (if it ends up being elucien) and while the vanserra family is definitely compelling, I dont think theres really any setup for an interesting political plot in the autumn court because the divine right of kings is real so no need to worry about the complications of who will inherit the throne, god will decide that, and I also feel like theres nothing major that really needs fixing. Apparently their farmers dont get paid enough but its like, well Eris can just pay them what they want once Beron is dead because hes not evil. I guess theres also the common fae-discrimination but Eris seems to be a little racist and also the narrative itself does not care about the common fae, so I have no hopes for that plotline

[the-savage-garden]

ACOTAR Romance Sucks

I’m back to talking about this book series again, I had been sick so I wasn’t in the mood to delve into it.

I’ve been mostly focusing on the worldbuilding but there is something I should be analyzing about with this series; and that is the romance. The thing is that romance can be subjective so it’s difficult to discuss it, like my idea of a romantic relationship could come across as boring to someone else and vice versa so it’s tough but I do want to go over it.

It’s been awhile since I read ACOTAR and ACOMAF so I don’t remember things very well. I might make more posts about this if I ever decide to go reread them (I really don’t want to though but it can help me figure out why I have problems with this series).

I’ve been trying to avoid being too harsh on the romance but honestly, I think it’s garbage. Like, I had bought into the Feyre/Tamlin romance at first, but then the 2nd book introduced Feyre/Rhys which is just the exact same relationship as the first one and I started to realize just how both of them were just hot garbage.

So, both of these relationships is set up as a enemies-to-lovers with forced proximity thing. Honestly that does sound fun, problem is is that it’s not written well. Majority of the time it was just the male love interest lecturing Feyre on how to live her life and it got frustrating to read that. The supposed “romantic tension” is really just sexual tension instead. The “enemies” part is just Feyre’s love interests controlling her, both of them!

What I consider an enemies-to-lovers relationship is when characters have completely different personal values but realizing that they’re differences complement each other well because of circumstances. Both Feyre/Tamlin and Feyre/Rhys doesn’t read like that at all that I’m still confused by what kind of relationship it’s supposed to be.

I was hoping that reading ACOWAR would give me some context but reading 6 chapters of it still leaves me confused on what the fuck is happening.

What also doesn’t help is that the worldbuilding really ruins the relationships so it makes it difficult to even be invested in anything. Since we’re in Feyre’s POV she’ll think one thing and then not even a page later her thoughts will contradict earlier ones and I’m starting to think that’s not on purpose either (I think SJM rambles too much).

I’m sure I’ll probably come up with more if I scour the books for other problems with the romance but I’ll do that some other time.