#like half of the books i own (400+) are booktok books but some of them are genuinely the most beautiful things i’ve ever read

[zaddyazula]

i used to be really into booktok (didn’t have tiktok but would watch compilations on youtube for book ideas) and as embarrassing and terrible as that is it’s responsible for me finding my favourite books ever 😭😭😭

[ae-neon]

Debated making this rant cause I'm technically shading a mutual but I cannot keep quiet about this

Y'all are too comfortable telling black women what should and shouldn't be considered racism.

Especially in defense of these shallow smutty booktok romantasies that are actually dripping acidic right wing ideology into your brains.

I am not here to debate this. These books and the characters in them are racist. That is a fact.

You can say the Bat boys are "Caucasian", you can say it's prejudice not racism, or they have trauma that justifies their thoughts and actions, you can insist one is worse than the other etc etc I literally don't care

But realise that if you can see past what the author and other characters say to have a better understanding for Nesta and Tamlin and Lucien and whoever else but you wanna insist that majority, if not all, Illyrians are incapable of changing their societal norms given the chance and infrastructure then you are being racist too. You have bought into the racism of the characters and the author.

Even if you see the Illyrians as white, in the context of the story, they are their own race separate from human and high fae and outside of that, whether you want to admit it or not, they are poc-coded

Cassian and Azriel being under Rhysand's authority does not negate the fact that they have more power and influence than any other Illyrians.

Them being traumatized doesn't negate that in 400 years they have used their power and influence to advocate for 0 policies to stop other children from being victims of the same abuse.

Cassian's own mother was tortured to death but he only puts his foot down regarding the training of women when it affects his white girlfriend.

These men belong in hell. All of them.

Them asking the camp lords if the women can train and taking their refusal doesn't mean anything. It's like asking slave masters if they can let their slaves read. Who gives a flying rainbow coloured fuck what they think.

In 400 years, all they did was declare, into the void, that wing clipping is illegal and never lift a finger to enforce it but I bet you if some guy or even an Illyrian woman took an ax to Feyre's wings we'd suddenly see the sky fall

They pick and choose when to care about Illyria, they are more than happy to profit from the labour of the soldiers bodies, they speak in rancid tones about the people even though if you counted every single Illyrian man above 18 as pure evil it would still be less than half of all Illyrian people.

These men are racists.

They are textbook self hating moc.

They literally ascribed Illyrian traits to Nesta when they find her behaviour less than desirable

There is a word I wanna use but I won't

If you wanna make a post about how sad their lives are that's cool, your blog your space, but please do not attempt to tell me that they are not racists in the comments of my posts