#i hate hate hate 'pair the spares' as a trope as a dynamic in general etc etc

[riverblujay]

You just reblogged my FHSY post with some EXCELLENT tags and I wanted to say you're so right the pair the spare stuff was bizarre. I ended up liking where Sandra Lynn and Jawbone went in SY but at the end of FY it's so weird. Also I'm following you now because you're a self proclaimed Murph girlie and SPMGs like us need to stick together

(aforementioned tags)

ty bestie!!

truly TRULY the worst part of FY for me. like, i super get that they were trying to wrap stuff up after having a super intense combat, so i also don't, like, hold it against d20 that much?? and maybe it would be even less tasteful to me if we didn't have icon and aroace ally murph (and brennan ig but murph like. INITIATED this plot line) giving us Allo/Amatonormativity Personified as baron.

fwiw, im not 100% romance repulsed either. and i GET that teen romance is part of the genre they're trying to convey in fh!! i just think maybe it should have been limited to the teens, at the very least in FY. it's SO awkward and personally i think reads as "brennan had some (head)canons abt who got together with who, eventually, but it's the last episode so there's no time to seed that in a graceful way if he wants his two cents out there." which is his right to have ideas for who among the adults get together, but like--the entire focus of the whole season was the bad kids, not their parents. so it feels weird when your thoughts abt who ends up dating, even if there is SO MUCH context and build up in brennan's head, are presented as a loose thread being tied up in a bow.

ignoring my complicated and by no means exhaustive feelings/rambling on the topic, if you have not listened to naddpod yet i cannot recommend it enough!!!! yes im a murph girlie and i LOVE his dm style (recently saw a comment on a post saying naddpod has less patrons than wbn bc "brennan is a better dm" and it made me FERAL. i get it i shouldn't have read the comments in the first place, and also you (the commenter) hate consequences and dope encounters. literally no one can say a DROP of MURPH SLANDER unless they have listened to eldermourne finale AND c3e27 the king of dragons. combat and encounter design dm of all time FR!!!!)

but i just love how despite naddpods tight editing, you can tell just how much murph, emily, caldwell, and jake care abt each other both as people and as their pcs. emily has literally said the way jake INSTANTLY decided that hardwon loved the crick made her feel always welcome at a table with him. how much the cast makes each other laugh, or cry, or feel any kind of emotion.

ALSO moonshine is SO aroallo coded to me. axmurph aspec allies fr fr. naddpod dnd podcast of all time in my heart <3

[crimsonblazw]

Zero-one is the perfect start to a new generation

artist credit:https://twitter.com/r5WitWG0y8Poz0K/status/1300385462972866560?s=20

Introduction

Kamen rider Zero-one concluded last week and I believe it to be a very strong first entry into the Reiwa era of Kamen rider. On the surface it's back to basics with a grasshopper themed main character and simple animal motifs for his forms and the other riders while the major motif of the season centers around Artificial intelligence and the concepts of free will,dreams,and empathy.

At first glance you'd have several preconceived notions about the series,but there is FAR more than meets the eye.

Story and themes

Structurally this season of KR is made up of bigger arcs (four in total) which break down into smaller two episode arcs that make up the week to week episodes which allowed the show to maximize the monster of the week formula while the main story progresses at it's own pace (the best way to do KR in my opinion), this pairs well with one of Zero-one's biggest strengths; world building.

Each two episode arc explores the humagears' place in society and they're overall relationship with humans leading to a diverse range of dynamics that get explored over the course of the show with very few stones left unturned.

In general the thesis of the show is built on the beliefs of the humagears' creator Hiden Korenosuke,that humagears will help humanity achieve the their dreams.

At first you can take this literally given humagears can be thought of as "tools" for day to day life when in reality they where meant to grow along with humans (in other words reach singularity) and use their own passions and dreams to elevate those of humans and vice versa,the significance being that humans by nature are empathetic and social beings who have only made it so far as a species due to our ability to care for one another, humagears are meant to help humanity achieve our full potential faster.

The challenges this idea faces is a society that not only wants humagears and humans alike to become nothing more than "beasts of burden" for the upper class but also it's mirror opposite;the potential malice and selfishness that ultimately destroys lives and dreams,all of this being synonymous with the classic fiction trope or A.I. and robots representing the inhumane treatment of the common person.

Characters

While the overall show and it's smaller stories make up the backbone of the show the main characters are the heart, having arcs that represent the exact message the themes of the show are trying to communicate.

Aruto Hiden/Zero-one- Our main character. He has the staple good heart of a main rider with a strong belief in the power of dreams.

His arc is flat in order to inspire the other characters around him and further their own growth while having his own convictions tested the challenges of the show. He's very endearing and seeing how he overcomes every obstacle (even when it's crushing him) is the mark of a good main rider.

Izu-Aruto's humagear partner. It's easy to dismiss Izu's growth but her change is present but subtle. She goes from following Korenosuke's initial directives to making her own decisions,she starts off confused by Aruto's jokes but begins repeating them,and she goes from being Aruto's secretary to being his family. The evolution of her and Aruto's relationship is heartwarming and gives them on the best male/female lead dynamic in the franchise.

Fuwa/Vulcan-He starts as a staunch humagear hating foil to Aruto and a rather typical secondary rider. But after discovering his entire mindset has been "crafted" by those who want to control him his arc blossoms into a great story of a man taking back control of his life and rejecting the false and toxic ideals forced on to him, resulting in arguably the best arc in the show.

Yua/Valkyrie- While her arc can be easy to miss she represents those who unintentionally surrender their personhood to those above them while believing they retain their independence. Despite some lacking screentime she does recognize her worth and atonomy and reclaims her life (not unlike her partner Fuwa) and I hope future female riders follow her example (but with more screentime).

Horobi and Jin- Our two initial villains and the heads of the humagear terrorist cell Metsubojinrai.net.

Horobi begins as a steadfast believer in his "master" the Ark and shares it's beliefs in the extermination of humanity, beliefs he tries to pass to his "son" Jin who has concerns about their violent and forceful methods before becoming indoctrinated.

As the show goes on Jin begins to develop his own beliefs separate from Horobi while Horobi begins to experience a crisis of faith. They're dynamic is unique in KR and their arc is a perfect representation of the kinds of toxic concepts that can be passed down from parent to child but with time can be unlearned.

Gai/Thouser- One of the two major villains in the show. In many ways he's a more serious version of Dan from Ex-aid, his main position in this story being a stand-in for the greedy ruling class who will destroy as many lives as they want so long as they get what they want.

He's genuinely impressive in terms of how well calculated his plan is and absolutely loathsome for the fact he essentially caused everything wrong in the series. His eventual "redemption" is VERY hard to swallow but for food or ill does fit with the shows themes of overcoming our worst aspects and also doesn't bend over backwards to make him sympathetic.

Naki/Raiden-the other two members of Metsubojinrai.net. Wish they had gotten more screentime, especially since Naki seemed like a character that would have been cool to see more of. I do like them still and think it's cool they got their own happy endings.

The final arc

This deserves it's own section. The final arc is one of the most bold and interesting final arcs in the franchise and in my opinion is the best one since Drive.

The asset that really makes this part of the show work is the "final boss" the Ark. Despite seeming like a generic "evil entity" final boss commonly seen in toku the Ark is a methodical and truly evil being.

The Ark represents the darkest parts of human existence, mainly that our compassion/love can be easily turned into malice when the hardships of the world take it's tole on us.

Going deeper the ark's "philosophy" can also be seen as a parallel to those who think humanity is better off destroyed because of humans alleged inherent cruelty,not realizing that not only are humans not inherently cruel but that mindset is at most a trauma based response to the hardships of the world or a hypocritical mindset that give those who think it a free pass to be malicious and hateful while thinking they're "enlightened" for recognizing the alleged folly of man.

The Ark utilizes these concepts in it's final plan when it manipulates Aruto and Horobi take each other to their lowest points by having them kill each other's most treasured person,the duel between the two fueling human/humagear tension to the point of war,and it did this all without being around for most of it.

Aruto is so besides himself with grief that he essentially abandons his dream,I think what stood out to me was Fuwa attempting to stop Aruto and pointing out that Aruto is where he used to be,full of rage and hatred that can only be overcome with someone else showing you genuine empathy, which is what Fuwa is attempting to give to Aruto as a parallel to when Aruto did it for him.

The final battle is not only between Horobi and Aruto but between Malice and empathy. And in the end the two breaking down and recognizing each other's pain with Aruto winning but sparing Horobi is the final "test" of what fully realized empathy is.

Outro

2020 has been rough. I think more than ever we see what's wrong with the world and what we need to do to fix it. Whether it was intentional or not Zero-one was the rider I think we needed right now.

In a society that doesn't value empathy ,unity,or dreams we have to elevate each other and hold on to our passions and dreams for the future.

Thanks for reading ! Please like and share ! And feel free to share your thoughts. Keep your eyes peeled for future posts! Best wishes friend

[sugarandspice-games]

I guess this is becoming a trend... I’m popping in before the actual intro to clarify-- if the text is in italic, it is me (Sugar) talking and regular is Spice. Alright? Cool. And so--

So, one night I’m going through youtube and I come upon this one shitposty video about some random anime that I’ve never even heard of. After doing some research, I discover that it’s actually based on a dating sim that I’ve also never heard of. As a joke I was like “Hey Sugar wanna watch this as a joke, it might be funny” and so we did. And uhm. Well.

Today we’re gonna be reviewing Brothers Conflict, aka Sweet Home Alabama 2: Electric Anime Boogaloo aka the anime that ruined our lives. [Again, disclaimer: neither Sugar nor I condone incest and/or pedophilia, two themes which are uh, very rampant in this anime which is why I cannot recommend it in good faith. It’s not good, don’t get me wrong. I can’t really say that I liked it even if watching it and ragging on it was kind of enjoyable, and I did get attached to some of the characters because that’s the kind of idiot I am. Also, we’re not shirking our duties to write I swear please don’t kill me--] Anyway, an obligatory SPOILER WARNING though this probably isn’t going in the main tag bc I do not want the fans to publicly stone me. Why are we reviewing this? Bc we need to talk about it somewhere. Though I say review lightly bc this... is really more of a critique.

ALSO we only watched the anime, idk if things are different in the game. There is no full english translation for the games and most of the LP channels have been copyright striked, so please don’t come at us for not knowing anything. I also know that otome games and dating sims don’t tend to translate well to anime, and I will be addressing this later.

So, dear god, where do I begin.

Where do we begin indeed? How about the fact that her name is Ema and I had to google to remember the heroine’s name? Also, she is seventeen.

Our plot, or well... what you COULD call a plot, I guess, if you REALLY wanted to give this anime that much credit, focuses on the aforementioned seventeen year old Hinata Ema, who has an absent father who apparently FOUND THE TIME TO FALL IN LOVE AND GET MARRIED BUT NEVER HAS A SECOND TO SPARE FOR HIS ONLY CHILD, RINTARO I SWEAR TO GOD I AM TAKING CUSTODY OF YOUR CHILD. HAND HER OVER-- Anyway. He’s getting married to a woman who has 13 sons (jesus christ ma’am have you ever heard of a condom?) and he decides to move her in with them because... I guess he has less braincells than I have balls, which is to say, zero. Hi, I’m trans.

So, Ema moves in with them... along with her talking grey squirrel, Juli. Juli is... interesting and by interesting, I mean-- ABSOLUTELY PUZZLING. He, apparently, has seen the majority of Ema’s life from babyhood to teenagerhood and can talk but is only understood by Ema (who he calls Chii) and Louis, the eighth son in the Asahina family. It is never explained why, or how Chii came across him or how in an episode, a single episode, he becomes human because why the hell not, I guess??? (Also, he is pretty. YES. I said it. Fight me.) [Quick Spice intervention, this squirrel can talk to people, transform into a human, enter dreams, and live way longer than a squirrel should since the average lifespan of a squirrel is like 6 years in the wild. Juli is apparently a god as none of this is EVER explained.]

And when she meets the Asahina family, it’s pretty much immediately chaos because these heterosexual (I guess? They look like a bunch of twinks to me but there goes anime trying to convince me that straight people are real and not a lie made up by Trump) men have NEVER and I mean NEVER known a woman in their entire lives, since they seem to want to bang their stepsister immediately. And most of them are GROWN ASS ADULTS. Only three of them are actually minors (though Iori is 18 and only one year older so I guess??? It’s okay??? But still weird) and one of them is a 13 year old who looks and acts like he’s 8.

Oh, and did I mention that out of these boys, only the adult triplets and the abusive asshole 16 year old get any kind of characterization AND character development? I mean, Subaru gets an “arc” if you can call it that, but really, they don’t give him much... personality. You could replace him with a cardboard cutout and it’d be the same. I feel bad for him (but not really because dude you are 20 and she is your sister, what the fuck--)

But if there’s anything good about this anime, it is the characters themselves. Several of the boys have redeeming qualities and interesting personalities and quirks, as well as interesting relationships and dynamics with each other. Yes, some of them are lacking in the plotline department while others may have decent plotlines and lack personality, and then some of them are just given absolutely nothing (COUGH Masaomi COUGH Ukyo COUGHCOUGHCOUGH Iori, and by the way, what the fuck is that game plotline bc I read the wiki since I wanted to know more about him. We don’t have time to unpack the mento illness luv. But you’re telling me they had all this meat to work with and they threw it in the trash and gave him nothing? What the hell?) And if anything, I feel as if the characters themselves are crippled by the plotline. If given a different story, perhaps, they may have room to shine, because a lot of them are compelling if not lovable (though some may not be... lovable. COUGHFuuto, at least not for me.) If you want to see our review on the characters, we’ll put out another post.

Iori... Iori has a hell of a plot in the game, according to the Wiki but I can’t blame the writers for not exploring all of it because whoa. It is dark and not in a good way. But back to the subject at hand... I agree with Spice. I do/did like quite a lot of the characters... provided the entire romantic plot is taken away but we will go into more of why the plot is problematic below. All I can really add is: There is a baby in this dumpster and canon has been taken out back to be shot like a lame horse.

This brings me to a point in which I would like to pause the character discussion and bring up a glaring flaw with this anime in general (aside from the... plot. Look, I’m not a huge fan of weird stepsibling stuff but I think that if you want to do something like that, there are ways to do it and ways not to do it. This was the way not to do it, which I’m getting to). The biggest thing that made this anime so uncomfortable was the imbalance of power dynamics. Why is the protagonist 17 when most of the love interests are 18 and older, and I mean much, much older? And she’s not any 17 year old... she’s a lonely, neglected girl who is starved for the love of a family. This makes her easily manipulated by the brothers, who clearly desire her for less than wholesome reasons, and that makes it skeevy. I’m not sure why there’s such a fetishization of nonconsent in media, as if it’s fine for as many men to lust after female protagonists as the writer desires BUT the woman can’t want a single one of them in return. It’s creepy, and quite frankly, I am very much over it. I also get that the age thing is probably a product of the protagonist of a teenager oriented dating sim not translating well to an anime (because really, all otome game MCs are meant to be a neat little pair of shoes for the player to imagine themselves in), but why are we fetishizing a teenager being groomed by adults anyway? Especially adults who have this much power over her to begin with? The power dynamics bring this plot from “Oh, this might be kinda trashy but it could be entertaining” to “This is extremely creepy and rapey and kind of a dumpster fire.”

This is also true. If we were to take age into consideration, Fuuto, Yusuke, and Iori would be the three candidates left for Chii. This is taking out the youngest as well, who is... thirteen, I think? But anyway, (I know I am probably going to get some hate for this but go for it), I am into stories that explore the stepsibling thing and it can make a good narrative-- but before everyone gets uppity: There is a line between FICTION and REALITY and I do not condone real life incest but a story is a story and there are ways to frame it that make it clear that it is not a romantic thing, or acceptable. This anime does not do that in it’s dynamics because some of the brothers do start off in that very firm caregiving, family role and it is a sharp turn into romance that makes you go, “?” or in Fuuto case, a blending that does lean into fetishization.

All in all I think the plot maybe could have been okay? I’m not saying it isn’t problematic, because we all know it is, who are we kidding? But I don’t think it’s wrong per se to explore family dynamics with romance and to understand where the line should be drawn, and maybe exploring the definition of family itself. I have seen fanfictions with similar tropes ask those questions and explore the concept beautifully without romanticizing or fetishizing incest and unhealthy power dynamics. It could have been good, and I get that perhaps I’m barking up the wrong tree by expecting mature themes in an anime based on an otome game, but it also could have been a lot less... creepy (I have used that word so much that it looks wrong now) even if it wasn’t the greatest thing ever. But again, what was I expecting? I watched this whole thing as a joke and ended up attached to the characters like a fool... That tends to be a trend here, and this is why we are so salty all the time. So anyway, stay tuned for our review of the characters! We may not cover all of them since some of them don’t really get anything, but we’ll cover what we found interesting.

[terresdebrume]

Hi, I'm reading your thougts on Shadowhunters (all media types) and having a field day! I can't seem to find anything on the whole mortal/immortal drama with malec and I know I'm like, 5 years late but I would love to have your opinion if you feel like sharing? (thks if you do, don't feel pressured though) My main issue is 'why does it even matter'? For all they know they could break up anyday so throwing immortality away/becoming immortal sounds like a big mistake and not worth it "yet"...

Ooooh boy has it been a while since I thought about this franchise xD

In my opinion (and keeping in mind I haven’t touched the books or show since I made the healthy decision to stop hate-watching the thing) from a Watsonian* POV, the immortality bit matters, but not for the way the book make it out to be. It matters because Magnus is literally hundreds of years older than Alec who, at the point when they meet, is * checks wiki * only 18.

This opens up a whole host of power dynamics that wouldn’t all be present, or would be very different, if Magnus were also 18, even if he were immortal. I don’t recall book!Magnus acting predatory towards Alec (although he was selfish and entitled about their relationship at more than one point, but these are not the same thing) but even then the fact that the power imbalances between them were never acknowledged led to some things that I really, really disliked a lot.

So yeah, from a Watsonian pov, I agree with you that the whole ‘but Magnus is gonna live so much longer than Alec’ bit is really not where the real problem is at, especially not in the first few books.

Unfortunately, from a Doylist** POV, Cassandra Clare seems to be a big proponent of the ‘love at first sight lives forever’ trope thing (as well as a bit of pair the spares, imo) which means that as soon as two characters get together it’s got to be True Love For Life*** and thus, immortality immediately opens up a problem in that it means Magnus might (gasp!) have a life after Alec dies.

And because this is the position of the author, and it feels very much like said author doesn’t feel like giving her characters opinions that differ from hers, then it immediately becomes the main concern of the characters, even though this is totally not what the vast majority of people would worry about first. Or at least not the only thing they’d be worrying about, especially not when considering Alec & the others are child soldiers who are supposed to be aware they could die any minute, and thus realize people will keep going without them—and in fact, would probably have been in this position themselves before.****

So yeah, that’s how I understand the big deal about immortality and why it gets blown up so much in the narrative, and subsequently immensely downplayed when Alec basically considers slow murder and Magnus essentially (iirc) goes “lucky for you you’re pretty” and then they never talk about it or change their relationship: because it’s more about CC’s shipping and/or idea of Romance than about what the characters ‘would’ feel if they were real people.

--

*Meaning from the pointof view of the characters as “people”, in case you don’t know that word.

**As in, from the POV of this is a book and therefore every aspect of it is entirely subject to the author’s wishes/opinions/real life influences.

***To the point where the only way couples are broken up in these books is if one of them die. I partially blame the general tendency of american media of pulling a WASP and going “Deee-vor—sse? Wha’s that?” every time it tries to write a ~family show~ (Which I deeply dislike, by the way, in case you couldn’t guess)

****But that presumes CC wanted to write character who sounded like real people who were influenced by their surroundings and history but uh...that’s not really what she’s doing, so. Yeah.

[junkobears]

Okay, lets talk shipping then. 1, 2, 4, 26, 27!

I feel like my answers for these questions are gonna all sound so samey, haha. There’s your warning! V3 spoilers as usual (sorry Ben it IS a salty ask meme tho, V3 makes me produce endless volumes of it).

1. What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?

I was gonna go for the obvious low-hanging fruit popular ships, but that’d be me lying, I know exactly why they’re all so popular. I just don’t have the same tastes. Fandoms be so predictable. So I’m gonna go with two ships I remember having a… reasonable?? amount of popularity back in the 2012/2013 SA LP days that never made ANY sense to me personally: Koizumi/Souda and Asahina/Hagakure.

To me they just feel like THE definition of Pair the Spares + Obligatory Hets. Do either of these pairings have any interesting interaction in their respective games beyond ‘comic relief gags’? Okay I could kinda see the former being a “she makes him a better man” kinda deal but also that trope makes me gag, so I still don’t like it. And the latter is literally just a Survivor Pairing to match with Kirigiri/Naegi and Fukawa/Togami. Like WHY?? There’s just nothing appealing about these two together. Asahina deserves better and even though I actually like Hagakure more than most people, I just can’t imagine anyone genuinely shipping him. I’ll never understand the appeal. I’m glad they’ve pretty much disappeared as genuine fandom ships from what I’ve seen.

2. Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP?

Kirigiri/Naegi and Akamatsu/Saihara immediately come to mind. I never read the former’s relationship in DR1 as romantic in any way and I like to think of Naegi as Kirigiri’s old HS friend that’s always there for her back home, no matter what she does or where she goes in her life, and gives her relationship advice everytime she’s got a crush on the newest girl of the week/month, haha. Honestly that’s how I view the entire DR1 survivor group’s relationship being like, as platonic old HS friends who even if they don’t meet up for YEARS, will always support and be there for each other no matter what. So yeah I hated how DR3 handled Kirigiri/Naegi, let alone the popular fandom interpretation of their bond.

The latter one is less a BroTP to me and more just… they trust each other and work together really well, whether it’s in a killing game or a project in a mundane School Life AU. But not really huge friends? More like colleagues. I just hate everything about how they’re portrayed in canon so I don’t really think about my personal preferences for their relationship much, sorry. I’d want Akamatsu to just eventually move on from him, whilst acknowledging he’ll always be a part of her life/past. 

4. Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?

Oh gurl, I’m sure you could guess most of my NoTPs already. Akamatsu/Saihara as I mentioned in the above answer is a huge NoTP for me. Apart from that… I guess there’s a difference between my personal NoTPs that are unrelated to fandom popularity, and the ones that ARE popular. I’ll split ‘em up them.

Personal NoTPs: Junko/Matsuda, Junko/Komaeda (is this popular actually? I have no idea)

Fandom Popular NoTPs: Saihara/Ouma, Harukawa/Momota, Kamukura/Anyone

This made me realise I actually don’t have a lot of proper NoTPs? I’ve probably forgotten some TBH, but MY GENERAL GIST IS: I don’t like Character I Like/Character I Dislike ships, I don’t like Forced Hets and I don’t like ships that exist solely for/because of fujo/yaoi fans. Every other ship I can get behind in some form TBH.

26. Most shippable character?

Apart from my top three girls who are basically my shipping bicycles? Or [Girl]/[Girl] ships in general cuz ho boy do I love all the girls in this series? I’d say Hinata, if I’m honest. I feel like he has an interesting dynamic with basically every DR2 character in some form, and I could easily make up some headcanons for him being paired with non-DR2 characters I’m interested in as well. He’s a good lad. Relatable and ‘normal’ in a non-aggravating way unlike the Kodaka-pandered other dude protags.

Akamatsu as well actually, same deal with her with the V3 cast (EXCEPT SAIHARA OFC) + non-V3 characters. Depending on the character there could be some real complimentary OR clashing personalities since Akamatsu is so headstrong and a clear leader-type from the get-go. Clearly if you’re a protagonist I really like, I can and will ship you with anyone, haha.

27. Least shippable character?

Apart from the obvious answers, which are the Warriors of Hope and Haiji Towa, respectively, I’d say honestly Ouma? I know this will sound so weird cuz I’ve said before that I’d be interested in his interactions with many other characters in the past, such as Celes/Shirogane… but I don’t really SHIP him? Definitely not romantically, since he’s just so childish-acting throughout V3. So all my pairs that include him are at best, platonic. Usually I just wanna see him face off to some of the more ‘evil’ characters since he fails super hard at being an evil supreme leader, haha. And I want Celes to swindle him and forcefully make him one of her nameless male knights to serve her + her rich GF Sonia.

[howlsmovinglibrary]

So I finished ACOWAR

This is in no way a coherent or articulate piece of writing in the same way my ACOTAR/ACOMAF piece tried to be, and I don’t think it even can be called a review, because I don’t tend to review books that already have this much visibility in the booklr community. It’s more just the notes I made while reading ACOWAR, which I kind of felt was the weakest book in the series so far (and if you haven’t already guessed it, I’m not much of a fan to begin with).

This entire piece is basically just spoilers, and salt, so please don’t read unless you already know/don’t mind finding out some major plot points!

First off, can I just say that every time ‘the male’ or ‘the female’ is used as a descriptor, I wince. I think it is a) bad writing and b) cis-centric as fuck. There needs to be more non-binary people in fantasy!

This book was so….bloated. It needed to be edited down a lot – the sheer number of chapters is insane. I had this poignant realisation when I read five chapters of High Fae trash talk at the faerie High Lord meeting and then…the thing they were having a meeting over just…happened anyway? And the meeting suddenly had no meaning whatsoever?

So many abusers are now being made into sympathetic/rehabilitated figures. I took Rhys’ redemption arc in ACOMAF because I kind of suspected that that was the way his and Feyre’s relationship were going to pan out but….both Eris and Tamlin received sympathy, and were made into heroes or forces for good at some point in the plot? Feyre forgave Tamlin? Mor’s abuse at the hands of Keir and Eris is pushed aside because ‘times are hard’ and ‘tough choices have to be made’? And Mor had literally no say or agency in that decision?

Meanwhile we have Ianthe. an abusive woman who’s entire character is one-dimensional villainy and demonised female sexuality. She is portrayed as having not a single scrap of goodness in her soul, not one redeeming characteristic, someone who Feyre has no moral quandary over letting be munched up by the Weaver. Even though her use of sex could realistically be portrayed as a product of internalised misogyny? And yet the men who ‘nailed a message’ into Mor’s womb get nuanced portrayal, the benefit of the doubt in the run up to the war, and even moments of heroism?????

I’m not saying that Ianthe should be redeemed, I just don’t understand why this instance of sexual abuse is so utterly condemned to the point where we watch her smash her own hand in some kind of medieval punishment, and yet the instances of sexual abuse perpetrated by men are all given a degree of either redemption or pardoning because of the circumstances of the plot. Is it because female to male abuse is more taboo and thus seen as more ‘evil’? Because SJM has so ingrained male-to-female sexual abuse into the very fabric of her patriarchal fantasy society, that we and Mor are expected to just accept that this is ‘the way things are’, or even write it off out of necessity as ‘boys will be boys’? I HAVE NO IDEA AND IT MAKES ME UNCOMFORTABLE.

Given my recent essay on the subject, I was interested that SJM tried to problematize and dismantle the concept of mating bonds a little in the conversation Feyre and Rhysand have about Lucien and Elain. It’s made into ‘Some natural function, not an indication of true, paired souls’ (Chapter 24). There was even the handwave of ‘oh this homosexual relationship may be the product of a mating bond, but they’re probably keeping it a secret from everyone’.

To be honest, I don’t think it succeeded in explaining away the problematic elements of mating. The biological imperatives were still there, ‘the bond is nothing more than...preordained guesswork at who will provide the strongest offspring’ (Chapter 24). Aggression was still a major part of the male side of the bond (like when we get the internal monologue of Lucien and witness him fighting his ‘instincts’) and it’s still implied that men are slaves to the desire that the bond generates, whereas women don’t feel it as strongly/can control their physical desires? ‘But the males...It can drive them mad. It is their burden to fight through’ (Chapter 24) This has some serious ramifications in terms of gendered conceptions of sexual drive. In my opinion, mating bonds are still squicky.

I now mostly just want SJM to put her money where her mouth is and follow through on her attempts at muddying the water: if she insists on pairing the spares, have Elaine get together with Azriel rather than Lucien, and show a relationship where the mating bond is terminated not because of outright physical abuse on the side of the male, but because of a romantic attraction overcoming a sexual/biological one. (Yes, I ship it. Or rather, I ship Elaine overcoming her trauma and going on to be a badass seer, building herself a temple and calling out bullshit like Cassandra in ancient Troy. But if she needs to have a boyf – and it’s SJM so she probably does – I want it to be Sad Shadow Man.)

‘Helion favours both males and females. Usually together in bed’ (Chapter 47). I’m not saying that bisexuality can’t work this way, but I gather that SJM has used the hypersexualised bisexual trope before. 

I think that perhaps Mor’s jealousy of Nessian is because she’s attracted to Nesta (a la season 1 Korrasami)? But even so her possessiveness of Cassian and her hostility towards Nesta was horrible and OOC and made me angry every time it happened. I hate it whenever female-female relationships are sacrificed because of a guy, but it is particularly frustrating in a book where male-female relationships are definitely already the priority. And given the way that Nessian is reaching canonical status, even if you do attribute the jealousy to female-female attraction, it’s only going to end badly for Mor.

Feyre used Mor’s sexuality as a weapon against her after she was justifiably called out on reckless behaviour. Fuck off Feyre.

I know that Azriel is a good character. I know this. And yet this book turned his relationship with Mor into this awful poster child ‘friendzone’ dynamic, where Mor feels pressurised to hide her sexuality because of the hurt it will cause *him*. I don’t think this is a fault of the characters, but of the entire treatment of their friendship and SJM’s portrayal of Mor’s queerness as a burden.

No main characters die. In this apparently impossible war that basically ends in an afternoon. No – everyone is magically resurrected after barely five pages.

Bonus points for not even having the courage to keep Amren out of fae form and thus rip up her incipient ship with Varien. You could have written an entire book on the inner circle going off on a quest to find and subdue a superhuman dragon Amren unshackled from the bonds of human morality. But no. She’s ‘in the cauldron’.

DEUS EX MACHINAS (dragon ex machinas?) MAKE ME WANT TO SCREAM. Find a better way to resolve your conflicts. Especially when even the decision to unshackle Amren from her human form in order for her to become the Deus ex Machina in question has literally no lasting consequences.

Speaking of deus ex machinas: is anyone else annoyed that the only death god who survives the battle is Bryaxis, the one who only asked for a window in exchange for his services, rather than freedom and an implicit murder spree? This means that there are literally no consequences to these so-called ‘tough decisions’ that have to be made in times of war, and everything can just go on fine. ‘No evil death gods were permanently unleashed in the making of this war.’

Can I forcibly rip SJM away from the Russian mythology that she is no doubt going to butcher in the continuation of this series? As soon as I read the name ‘Koschei’ I groaned aloud. You can’t just take whatever mythology you like and use it to make your own magic system! You’ve already detached the Morrigan from any semblance of Celtic Mythology!!!

That being said, I did like:

That the Archeron sisters FINALLY seem to be forming a strong friendship rather than the girl-on-girl hate mess it’s been for the past few books. I liked that Nesta was as powerful as Feyre, and had a more integral role in the final battle than she did.

I liked that in Feysand we see a stable ‘after they get together’ relationship. I still think ACOMAF is ‘stronger’ as a book, as SJM is better at writing romance than plot, but at least there was no needless YA angst, beyond Rhys’ martyrdom complex.

And this sounds awful, but I’m glad that Feyre had a PTSD relapse. I felt that in ACOMAF, her recovery from mental illness was equated a little too strongly with her growing romance with Rhys. Love doesn’t cure mental illness, and I’m glad the SJM showed that.

But overall, this book (much like this commentary) was a bit of a rambling mess of little consequence.