"You shouldn't criticise/analyse SJM's characters/worldbuilding because it just isn't that deep." Is a take I see a lot when someone analyses or criticises SJM, and while I get where you're coming from, I do have a couple of issues with this take.

First of all, it's important to be able to criticise all media, even your your favourites, no matter how good or bad they are. Media of all formats is a product of it's time and goes a long way into helping us learn about the sociopolitical climate of the time it was written, from the past, present or future. As a result, no piece of media can be considered 'perfect' or without points to criticise, and analysing it can give us perspective on issues we may not even realise exist. This is true for most, if not all media, from books to news channels to music or tv shows.

If you don't want to analyse or criticise it though, that's fine. Just ignore posts and videos of people who do, since there's no use in telling them that they're wasting their time. Some people enjoy criticising/analysing the media they consume, but if you don't, then just let them be.

Now, here's the bigger issue I have with this take. It might really not be that deep to you, but it might really be that deep for other people. Especially since SJM books have a pretty young fanbase. The books are YA, and are advertised as being for ages 12 and up.

Many kids, young girls mostly, that read, even just the first book, are shown Feyre forgiving Rhys at the end of the book after SA-ing her for three months or Feyre getting back with Tamlin after he watched her get tortured for three months, and romanticise it. Then there's the second book, where she ends up with Rhysand despite what he did, and even lets him do it again at the CON.

Nesta is pressured by Elain and Feyre to let her use their home for something incredibly dangerous despite her very reasonable concerns, only to then be insulted by Feyre's friends for a situation he wasn't even there for, only for some romance to between them to be hinted at. In Acowar she's further pressured by her sister, and strangers who hate her, to put her healing and coping from her trauma aside to push her clear boundaries to help her sister even more despite her and her friends not having a great track record of holding up their ends of deals from Nesta's experience.

And don't even get me started on the train wreck that was ACOFAS- ACOSF. If these actions and behaviours were acknowledged as being toxic or wrong, that would be fine, somewhat. However, the narrative paints these characters and behaviour in a positive light, despite the fact they aren't. For young readers to look at this, and to idolise these characters and their behaviours, thinking that it's what they want in a partner, is disturbing.

It's fine to not want to critique or thoroughly analyse a book, but discrediting people who do, especially if they're pointing out harmful behaviour being perpetuated in said books, is not. Ignoring the harmful behaviour these books perpetuate is making you a part of the problem, and I truly hope that your view on this behaviour would change if it was coming from a living person instead of a fictional one. Be it towards you or somebody you know.

Just my opinion but I don't think the inner circle should exist as a political group that helps their BEST FRIEND lead an entire court. Reasons why:1)They are his friends so he would most likely believe their version of events instead of another person's2) biased behaviour3) they act like literal children and can't behave civil unless it's with each other4) do they actually have political experience bc half their court Hayes them and they do whatever they want. ( More reasons I can't think of atm but ygiI'm not saying that rhysand can't have people he trusts within his council but he should also have mature and experienced members who will give him good advice and won't act like a group of toddlers. He gave his friends far too much authority and freedom to act however they want. Nesta's treatment is proof that if they collectively don't like someone they will put said person through hell.Just my opinion tho, to each their own yk

And I completely agree 😭😭

Velaris is the real CoN. Court of Nepotism

Cassian and Azriel are both revered as great warriors and like super talented so whatever with them ig. But Amren? She’s useless. Morrigan’s job could go to literally anyone (don’t even get me started on the shitty “she’s a dreamer” stuff they pull as an excuse to not save anyone else from the CoN).

3) YES OMG THAT HIGH LORD MEETING WAS A MESS

4) they in fact do not. Rhysand I can understand initially because his father died abruptly, but it’s been like 409 years and he’s still an idiot.

Also he placed Cas and Az in power immediately too, so it was nepotism because there is no way they were the greatest compared to his father’s underlings. I cant remember if this is right but I’m pretty sure he like immediately got rid of his father’s advisors, which is such a dumb idea as a fresh high lord with no experience.

And for the last point they’re treatment of Nesta does totally show their immaturity and inability to not have gripping control over everything. Feyre being upset and embarrassed about her sister pissed me off so much, and there’s 0 way she’s qualified to be a high lady. Rhysand literally let’s his little knife happy Cassian run wild and is like “I know he literally obliterated part of the summer court but we forced our soldiers on to their territory that they said they didn’t want so we should be okay 🙄”

Sorry this is rushed because I totally agree and needed to brain dump 😭

I just remembered that Cassian sat across from Mor sipping tea while she talked about how Nesta should be in a dungeon or being tortured by being locked up in hewn city and he’s just there blown the fuck away by Mor’s beauty AND THEN LATER she winnows to Illyria where Cassian is training, ogles him and talks to Nesta about how she’ll never deserve him and how attractive he is

Nesta stood up for Cassian during the high lord meeting, in front of EVERYBODY and he can’t take his family aside and tell them to stop starting fights with her? He’ll stand in front of Mor when Eris is around but sit by and do nothing when Rhys threatens Nesta’s life?

He. Does. Not. Love. Her. Funny also that his attitude changed toward her after the war when she was taking other men to her bed. Sjm made her sleep around out of character so that nessian can have hate sex but sjm still virtue signals feminism as if Cassian in acowar wasn’t calling her sweetheart and Cassian in acomaf didn’t wipe away her tears in front of the queens and everyone. He promised her time together as his would-be last words. But then sjm writes that Nesta uses sex to cope and now all-of-a-sudden Cassian is telling her that everybody fucking hates her and that he never asked to be shackled to her. Making it clear she can only use sex as a coping mechanism if it’s sex WITH HIM.

Suddenly he’s not understanding. Suddenly he isn’t gentle with her. No, now he’s an incel who locks Nesta up until she caves and sleeps with him.

It’s hard to imagine a being with wings, who flies in the air, would want to confine his MATE to a house she can’t escape from. Azriel, too, was locked up as a boy and then acts as a prison guard against her? And for Feyre to be the one to do it when she was supposedly traumatized when Tamlin locked her in his mansion? I understand why elain packed her clothes and sent her on her way— she’s the type to save herself and if she sided with Nesta she’d be locked up alongside her.

I’m just saying, ACOSF is a lot to unpack and I’m still processing my shock and disgust years later. I truly can’t believe it happened.

´´Everybody tried to help Nesta but she would not listen!´´

Everybody helping,

“You look horrible,” Amren said… . “though it’s hard to look good,” Amren went on, “when you’re out until the darkest hours of the night, drinking yourself stupid and fucking anything that comes your way.” -Amren

“Your sisters love you. I can’t for the life of me understand why, but they do. If you can’t be bothered to try for my happy little circle’s sake, then at least try for them.”-cassian

“You,” Cassian said from the armchair to her left. “This bullshit behavior.”-cassian

“Nesta is … she’s Illyrian. I mean that as a compliment, but she’s an Illyrian at heart. So there is no excuse for her behavior.”-Rhysand

“I’ll talk to her.” “Don’t,” Elain said flatly, “She won’t listen.” Like hell she wouldn’t.-Feyre and elain

“I want you out of Velaris,”-Feyre

“You have become a pathetic waste of life”-Amren this is actually exactly what nestas abusive grandmother said to her

If i could go to velaris, first person i attack would be amren and id win because this girl cant even reach my shoulder 🤪

The whole Inner circle should die.

I SWEAR ACOWAR CASSIAN WOULD NEVER TALK TO NESTA THAT WAY.

Elains gotta get out of the IC

I don’t think people get it. There is nothing wrong with liking something in fiction that you would normally despise in real life. That is not my problem with Rhysand and the Inner Circle. My problem is when an author writes a story in a way that clearly shows they agree with these characters. I love a little freak as much as the next person, but not when you’re trying to convince me every two seconds they’re the good guy while they’re simultaneously doing bad shit. And yes it’s first person POV, so of course Feyre will think she’s right. This is why there needs to be a moral check. Suzanne Collins did this really well with The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Even without the existence of the OG series, you can tell the author/narrative does not agree with Coryo even though he thinks he’s right because Sejanus acted as a moral check, someone to challenge the MC’s view. Lucien could’ve been a moral check for Feyre. He so damn nearly was when he said “The girl I knew died under the Mountain.” BUT SJM DIDN’T COMMIT TO IT. Feylin could’ve been the tragic romance, Feysand the villain story. BUT SJM DIDN’T COMMIT TO IT. So instead, we have a half-baked hero who SJM clearly believes is in the right and not only is that poor writing but it reflects her irl beliefs. The way you think is reflected in the way you write. This series is targeted at impressionable teens when it’s clearly dark romance and I see people defending Rhysand and shitting on Tamlin and calling Rhys the hero. It’s ridiculous.

“We’d be better off throwing Nesta into the court of nightmares. She’d thrive there”

I know you did not just say that. For truth being your power Mor, I think you need to get a reality check and dig up the knowledge I know you have that Nesta is not as bad as your goddamn parents or anyone in the court of nightmares 🙄

Please get off your high horse and touch some grass

“ohhhh so nesta can be MEAN to the IC but they can’t do it back” i’m twenty. if a sixteen year old got under my skin that much to the point i was beefing with them i would end it all out of sheer humiliation. i don’t even want to imagine how embarrassing it would be if i was over 500 and a girl in her twenties got to me that bad. like was it really that serious.

One thing that makes me rage about ACOTAR every single day is that there is no mention at all about who did the household chores when Feyre was hunting.

It's canon that Feyre doesn't know how to cook. She doesn't do household work. She would spend the day in the forest hunting, which of course is a great thing in itself for a child( she was fourteen I think when she started hunting) but who took care of the house(hut).

Something tells me it wasn't Papa Archeron or Elain. In the first few chapters of Thorns and Roses Nesta had chopped wood twice(I think, it's been a while since I read the book). I'm assuming as there isn't much info about this that Nesta was the one to do all household work. There's cooking, cleaning, laundry, chopping wood, mending clothes, doing repairs around the house if required, groceries, and about a hundred other little tasks that keep a house running smoothly. Feyre didn't do it, Papa Archeron didn't do it, I can bet my life Elain didn't do it. Did magic faeries come to their house at night to do all this.

I don't understand where the narrative that Nesta was a spoiled and lazy girl who sat on her ass and didn't do anything came from. You know, my father had always told my sister and i, that whatever conflict we have between us, we should resolve it amongst ourselves. If you let a bunch of strangers know about the weaklinks in your relationships they will break you both apart. Of course, he tells us this due to our snake-ish relatives but honestly, when I had read about the relationship between the sisters, I wanted to scream at the book to not let the IC exploit their issues for personal gain. Which they did. That's exactly what Rhysand has been doing since he met the sisters.

Genuine question

What was done to Nesta was basically what happens to survivors of Wilderness 'therapy'. You know. Those camps for troubled kids that have been being exposed in the past 10 or so years to be absolutely disastrous places of abuse and harm that some.kids literally don't survive?

She was forced to do physical labor while unused to it until she broke down, broke apart, and became compliant with what the Inner Circle wanted from her.

Which... still makes no sense.

Amren is a bitch and genuinely horrible to almost everyone but that's accepted and she's even loved for it.

Mor uses sex and drinking to cope with her trauma and she's often praised for it.

Why is it different with Nesta? Why is literal wilderness therapy being lauded as a wonderful, redeeming thing?

Do you have any idea the damage that 'therapy' like that causes?

my acotar unpopular opinions

taking this time to come out as an acotar reader. yes i've read all the books and i've spent way too much time thinking about it. i enjoy the books in the sense that i enjoy hating on many of the characters and loving a few of the others.

be forewarned inner circle fans. you will not like this.

rhysand is not a 'morally grey' character. he's a rapist and a groomer. he sexually assaulted feyre utm, he groomed her (reminder that she was 19 in acotar), and he withheld important medical information from her. 'you'll always have a choice' my ass.

nesta telling feyre about her pregnancy was not a bad thing. why do people act like it is? 'oh she did it to hurt feyre' hurt her by doing what? revealing the lies that her beloved husband had woven? revealing the fact that she'd die giving birth? the fact that rhysand told literally everybody but feyre?

mor is not the champion for women everyone thinks she is. this i will give to sjm it is truly impressive to make a character like women and still be a pick me. i'm not even going to go into her whole weird ass relationship with her dad (i still don't understand why she wouldn't just kill him. 'oh rhys needed the army' rhys is supposed to be the most powerful high lord ever. either admit he's a fucking loser or give me an actual good reason for this) or the fact she's seemingly incapable of doing anything to help the women in the court of nightmares, but everytime she was mentioned, i had to let out a heavy sigh and rub my temples.

on a similar topic. i liked eris. like a lot. out of all the acotar characters sjm has written, eris is by far my favorite.

the inner circle needs to sit the fuck down. they are the most hypocritical bitches i've ever met. they like to think themselves high and mighty. reading them make fun of lucien's band of exiles while their name is literally 'court of dreamers' was the most infuriating thing ever. and then they have the gall to be insulted when called out. don't dish what you can't take.

out of all the inner circle, the only one i don't hate is azriel. this is simply because he is the only one who hasn't opened his big fat mouth and done something bad (except if you maybe count his whole thing with elain). cassian is on my hit list. it's on sight with cassian.

nessian is sjm's worst ship and i will stand by that. lucien/nesta could have been so much. 'nesta would have ripped lucien apart' and cassian was your first choice? not even azriel was considered? like be so for real right now. sjm didn't see the potential of lucien/nesta and i will forever mourn that.

sjm is a terrible writer. i'm not saying this to be mean but she seriously just sucks at it. that being said i admire her ability to still make millions of dollars off her shitty writing. as a woman, i am rooting for her. as a reader, every day i wake up a shoot a prayer to the heavens begging the gods to not let sjm write any more books from the inner circle's pov.

lucien/elain is better than azriel/elain. argue with the wall.

eris/azriel is better than azriel/elain. you can kiss my ass.

NESTA/ERIS IS BETTER THAN RHYSAND/FEYRE. i know this because i have been enlightened.

feyre is a victim to rhysand. that being said, she is also a major bitch. both can be true because these things are not mutually exclusive. i wish she could make friends outside of the ic like nesta did, but i know that's unlikely.

feyre's pregnancy storyline was completely useless and went against her whole character.

acomaf retconned everything about tamlin and feyre's relationship in order to make more money. idc.

tamlin gets a ridiculous amount of hate. rhysand is hypocritical. so tamlin locking feyre in a house because she wants to ride out with him into potential danger is terrible and abusive, but rhysand locking nesta in the house of wind for... *checks notes*... having sex and spending money on alcohol is helping her? what?

About the dancing chapter...

I agree 100% with this comment by the amazing @deathbealady (no seriously, I didn't even realise how similar this situation was to Mor's) and I wanted to use it as a jumping off point to talk about Eris Vansera. To be clear though, I like fanon Eris and am currently undecided about canon Eris, for reasons I'll explain later.

For now, we can start with the IC asking Nesta to try and seduce Eris. I refuse to believe they weren't given this idea by Elain, either because she volunteered Nesta outright, or because she put the idea of using Nesta's artistic passions that, at this point, they know were effectively weaponised by her mother, to seduce an older male with the idea of marriage.

Either way, the fact that the IC knew what Nesta's mother had done, and decided to take advantage of it without ever asking what she thought of it, or what she might like, despite it being the same thing done to Mor when she was Nesta's age, if not younger. It's made especially worse given that Nesta likely feels unable say 'no' to the IC, because if she does, she'd likely be threatened with Elain being made to do it.

If that isn't bad enough, and I wouldn't be sure if it could get worse if I wasn't about to tell you why, then we can take a look at the age gap between Eris and Nesta. I've heard people argue that it's fine, since they're both consenting adults, but I think that the term 'adults' needs to be redefined. Humans are considered adults at the age of 18 or so, but only have a fully developed frontal love at 25. Meanwhile, fae are considered adults by the age of about 50 to 80 (with the latter being the age that a High Lord can be named such, but some people say it's 50). This has some pretty serious implications.

Starting with the fact that if females in Illyria and the CON are married off/wings clipped when they have their first period, which seems to be from around the same time human women have theirs, to 18 if they try to prevent it through medication, then they aren't adults themselves. They aren't even half way there in the (I don't want to say mild, best case, better or anything like that case because it's all messed up) cases where the woman is 18 or so. It also implies that a fae female's frontal lobe isn't developed until she's over fifty, since we don't have evidence to suggest the contrary.

Just because Nesta was almost 25 when she became fae doesn't make it alright either. Given that her aging must have slowed astronomically when she was turned, it's fair to assume it would have a huge impact on maturity and brain development. Which means the Archeron sister's in general might have serious gaps in the way their brains develop, especially Feyre, since she was resurrected and her body changed. It might even be slightly different for Nesta and Elain since they were killed, pulled apart and put back together in the cauldron.

Since it was the cauldron, there's a chance that their brains were also changed to be like fae, but either way, both possibilities and scenarios come back to the same answer: The Archeron Sisters are still mentally children, and will likely remain so for several decades longer, perhaps even longer than regular fae due to the unprecedented and irregular nature of their existence.

This brings me back to the subject of Nesta and Eris. He is a grown adult many centuries older than Nesta, with frontal lobe development and centuries of experience. Nesta is barely even half way to being an adult, while he is over 500. Moreover, the IC believe that Eris is a monster.

Now, I'm well aware that there's likely more to the issues between Eris and Mor than what we've seen. Between Eris's own words regarding 'circumstances' that he wouldn't explain, to the narrative going out of his way to show us good parts of him. Such as the way he moved to protect his mother at the HL meeting, and how he let his own father torture him but still protected the IC's secrets and took the unnecessary verbal abuse from Cassian. There's even the fact that Eris simply lets others believe him to be the villain, and let's Mor control the narrative for her own comfort, as opposed to spilling whatever happened, even if it would, somehow, absolve him.

Now, to be perfectly clear, there is little Eris could say that would absolve him, truly, of what happened. I acknowledge that he's a victim of his father, however that doesn't mean he can't also be Morrigan's abuser. And yes, even if he didn't touch her, neglect is abuse. Leaving her there for dead, regardless of the reasons, is a messed up thing to do. The categories of victim and abuser are not mutually exclusive.

The narrative wants us, as readers, to question Eri's actions and begin to wonder what happened between him and Lucien and Mor. It wants us to open up to the idea that Eris may not be as bad as he's made out to be, and that there's something more sinister happening, since it puts some level of suspicion on Lucien, Mor and Beron. However, just because that's the story we're being fed as readers, doesn't mean that the characters have the same perspective, or are living the same story, necessarily.

If you think about it, they have no reason to believe that Eris isn't a psycho who abuses woman and would slaughter his brothers to get to the crown. His comment about circumstances does read like an abuser trying to justify his actions with little effort, while giving no real reason, not that one would make up for what the IC believes he did. It's not a good enough reason to absolve him or make him seem like a good person.

He still hunted Feyre down, even though he had no reason to once she and Lucien made it to the Winter Court, and it, logically, would've caused more trouble for Beron if they were caught. Especially since a whole fire fight took place, and it would be easy for Kallias to connect that with autumn citizens, since he didn't know about Feyre's magic. If anything, hunting them at that point would've caused more problems and they'd be better off just telling Beron that Feyre and Lucien were there. A high lady, if Beron acknowledges the title or not, trespassing in foreign lands with a banished son would be enough to raise a fuss about.

He, also, has people who've known him for centuries, from Mor to Lucien (though the latter probably has more accurate info given his connections in various courts, and the fact it's unlikely Mor shared many words with him over 5 centuries) and the fact he's essentially blackmailing the Nc. This is more so an issue of his having certain pieces of information being a cause for the IC to fear what he may do with it, or what might be found out by their enemies if they use torture or a daemati.

I'm not saying, by any means, that I hate him. I think he's actually written better than Rhysand at this point, since unlike Rhysie playing hero, Eris knows he's a terrible person and low key owns it. Whether or not that's subject to change is dependant of SJM's writing in the future. There's a chance she may actually turn him into Rhys 2.0 by pretended he was a good guy all along.

However, regardless of his reasons, he has done so many atrocious things that the IC have no reason to think he's a descent person. Mor clearly hasn't said anything about what happened and, as much as I don't like her, she has no on page motive to antagonise Eris otherwise. That might change later, especially if she's the traitor, but as of now, her behaviour seems understandable, somewhat, based on the version of events that she gives.

Yet, despite all of this, the IC still think that essentially whoring Nesta out to Eris because it suits their goals. Regardless of the risks to Nesta's safety, regardless of how Nesta feels about the matter and and simply going off of Feyre's guesses about how Nesta feels without ever feeling the need to confirm if any of them are accurate to Nesta.

Let me summarise: Rhysand and Feyre, Nesta's own sister, thought it was a good idea to use Nesta's artistic passions to seduce a man that is literally 20 times Nesta's age, letting said man ask for Nesta's hand, and letting Nesta consider accepting despite the IC believing he is a woman torturing psycho that would throw her to the wolves at the first chance if it helped him in the end.

Let's not forget that while Eris may be bit of a grey area for us at the moment, the IC knows that Eris also lives with abusers, like Beron, who'd have no issue using physical violence against Nesta. So even if they thought Eris wasn't a monster for some reason, they'd still be putting Nesta in danger. Especially if Beron is working with the Death God, who wants the trove and is using Bryallin to find it.

Oh, and this was all after Cassian came to the conclusion that Nesta was suicidal, and was sexually assaulted in a vision, if I remember right, while on a life threatening mission in a place the rest of the IC, even Amren, is scared of.

Regardless of what Rhysand says, he allows abusers near enough to his family, or the ones he doesn't care as much about, I suppose, and is seemingly willing to let them marry said abusers if it gets him his goal. Rhysand who was abused. Rhysand who's mother was forced into child marriage.

Rhysand who seems to ignore the fact that the Archeron sisters are children. Children can't consent, if it wasn't clear enough to him already. Also, consent must be informed, and last I checked, Nesta wasn't informed about Eris beyond him being a snake. She isn't given a heads up about how abusive he's believed to be, how he may have to kill/watch you die if his dad decides so, or how he's likely to leave you bleeding out in the woods if you're injured. This is literally what the IC believe he is like and they didn't tell her.

Consent needs to be voluntary. I think it's been well established that Nesta likely doesn't feel like she can make real decisions because of consequences she may face.

He's also completely willing to send a suicidal (you can't argue that he doesn't know since Cassian reports everything to Rhysand, and kind of Feyre, apparently, from her Valkyries to her progress in 'healing'/being brainwashed so there's no reason he wouldn't report that too) into life threatening situations, put them in a place where they could jump to their deaths at any moment, with magic that could provide literally anything but alcohol, and filled with weapons.

To conclude, Eris is a grey area in ACOTAR that, at this point, reads as what Rhysand kind of should've been if SJM didn't make him a good guy for no reason. Meanwhile, this 'good guy' is endangering his sister in law through abuse, emotional blackmail and brainwashing, while putting her in proximity with a known abuser. Might I remind you that she's a minor? With possible developmental gaps. And he's doing it all because her being in danger makes his life easier, and the cousin that the dude abused is going along with this without any issue.

you: mor was defending Feyre

me, an intellectual: except she's ignoring Feyres wishes of the IC staying out of the affairs involving her sisters, and is now pushing a vendetta on Feyres behalf that she explicitly said she didn't want

you: mor was defending Cassian

me, an intellectual: except Cassian was routinely ignoring the boundaries of a 23 yr old woman, following her home, getting in her space, harassing her and ignoring the verbal orders of telling him to leave her alone

Sometimes I just think about how sjm literally had to exclude Mor from acosf because Cassian would never choose Nesta over her and so she couldn’t be there for their…… “love”…… story **cough***Stockholm Syndrom***cough** to happen

It’s actually insane. That entire story was batshit crazy but Mor is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back in regard to Nessian

Cassian has so many problems and the way he treats Nesta is gross but the juxtaposition between how he treats Nesta and how he treats the other women in his life 🤚🏻💀 it’s just adding insult to injury

Morrigan smells like pick me girl and stale discount wine

Amren smells like irrelevant character and rotten corpse

Feyre smells like billionaire trophy wife and old man fart (thanks to rhysand)

Tell me how this makes sense

Rhysand + IC: ok folks let's go do evil shit to protect the 1% of our court we actually decide to rule and let them think we're evil af to protect them from the totally evil people in the other courts. Also other courts: *thinks they're evil*

Rhysand + IC:

Mmmm... I'm going to rewrite all of the Acotar series, but make it what we deserved. I can and will take suggestions. Things I already decided upon include:

No Tamlin villification.

Nesta not changing herself for Cassian, and Cassian remaining her whipped horndog husband in a couple that defines the 'Walk him like a dog' tiktok audio.

Making Rhysand an actual femenist.

Gay characters. And actual queer rep.

Fayre knows how to read and has actual fucking muscle.

I am also taking title suggestions.