#im the bad guy for doing anything that critisises her.

[haunted-house-heart]

living with someone with untreated mental illness is like. i understand why you're like this and i do empathize but also like. jesus fucking christ get some help before i throttle you i stg

[lunatic-fandom-space]

You know what its past midnight Im gonna make a post critisising acotar despite never having the read the series, the only book of SJMs ive actually read was crescent city but I spend a lot of time in anti acotar circles bc its fun being a little hater sometimes and I think I know enough by now to atleast critise some of the themes. I definitely know more about this series than I should, like I know about that immortal horse whose horse wife tragically died in horse childbirth and then Im pretty sure he died of horse sadness. And yet, despite cari can read being pretty good at explaining magic shit, I still dont know what the hell syphons are or why illyrians have them or why they matter so you really never stop learning huh

Anyway, I wanted to talk about the misogyny within the universe of acotar because its really bad, both in the sense that its just annoying and insufferable to read about even second-hand and in the sense that its badly written. The thing that inspired this was this short piece of flashfiction by @feynessupremacy about an unnamed girl from the hewn city being married off and having a horrible time living in this endless cycle of misogynistic abuse that her mom is still in and that her dauggters will end up in, all powerless to do anything against this kind of systemic sexism. I thought it was good and made its intended point pretty well but it also made me once again realize how borderline comical this series portrayal of misogyny is

Like, okay, once again, I have not read these books myself but it very much seems like the sexism in this world just materialized in the second book, from the summaries Ive watched it straightup seems like it was just not there in the first book. I mean hell, the entire plot hinges on the fact that Tamlin was sending all these fae disguised as fucked up creatures out so that they would hopefully be killed by a woman so she could break the curse, which implies that women being hunters was pretty normal. (Also, dont come at me with any kind of "oh, it doesnt specify the gender of the person who needs to break the curse a guy couldve done it as well", sjm is too insufferably heteronormative to consider that)

So basically what Im saying is, from my perspective it very much seems like sjm put not only systemic misogyny but like, incredibly violent systemic misogyny to the point where women being brutalized is basically completely normal, in her fantasy series for the sake of making a man look good because hes a wittle sad :( about it sometimes which is honestly pretty funny to me

But it gets even funnier because it doesnt even seem like sexism is really a widespread thing ? Like, i have never seen anyone else directly address this but its all I can think about: in the Nightcourt, the misogyny and institutionalized violence against women is literally the worst it possibly can be with genital mutilation and everything and then in the rest of Prythian its just like, not there. There are plenty of women with political power, the queen of adriada comes to mind first, Im pretty sure I read something about a woman from the wintercourt who was in a similar position of power, its unclear to me what all these fuckin priestesses do because theres no focus on the religion at all much less the institution(s) behind that religion, but they have to have some kind of power if theyre anything like priests in our world (although tbh they seem more like nuns to me functionally just with a diffrent name), especially Ianthe who was like a high priestess and directly in charge of Feyre, who shouldve been the most powerful woman in the springcourt by virtue of being with the high lord, Amren and Mor seem to be well respected outside of the NightCourt, their only deity is the MOTHER. Sure, there arent any "official" High Ladies but if being a High Lord entails being chosen by the magic of the land or The Cauldron or The Mother or whatever other kind of magic bullshit and women just dont get to have it for some reason, is that really indicative of the broader culture being sexist, or is that just God, Who Canonically Exists being sexist? Idk about you, but Im leaning towards the latter option

Thats not even mentioning the mortal lands which seem to be ruled by queens exclusively at the time of the story taking place, or Hybern which had Amarantha and I think her sister as well be these high-ranking generals and it wasnt presented as anything unusual. Like, are you telling me that the kingdom whose only value is "we love slavery, we would like to have slavery back" is more progressive than the court of fuckin Feminist King Rhysand?? I Am Going To Turn Into The Joker

Anyway, I think thats all I have to say, please correct me if I got any of this information wrong I cannot stress enough that I have not read these books and dont plan on reading them anytime soon, atleast not in english because reading the term mate a 1000 times sounds like too much for me to bear, atleast in german theyll probably use a term like "Gefährte/in" which doesnt make me think of actual animals