not sure if youre still in your acotar hate era but i just finally got around to reading the first book and…jesus that sure was something. if i ever have to read the word ‘males’ again it will be too soon

I don't think I'll ever be in an era where I think ACOTAR is good, so fire away!!! So sorry you had to go through that, hope there will be no males in your future :(

Honestly I think we should get the current writing team for SaB to adapt ACOTAR and see how much worse they can make it, like the way they absolutely destroyed good books?? What would they do to one that's already bad, maybe they could make it so ridiculous it becomes a comedy

They would make Rhysand say "It's your choice" approx 20 times by the time the credits roll on the final ep of s1. They would invent slurs for Illyrians. Tamlin stays the same (sort of crazy how similarily SaB writers treated the Darkling lol) except there is no sex pollen he is very respectful with consent in the beginning. Feyre is now a girlboss (derogatory) who is interested in politics and leadership instead of being a trophy wife. Azriel and Elaine had sex before but forgot about it

Sjm is one of my actually hated writers - my friend loved her and recommended her books so I read ACOTAR, and I liked it! Sure it was generic and very samey and it dragged in places but I didn't hate it and I thought it could go in interesting places!

Oh how naive I was.

So many generic white characters who are a "found family" (and I say that with the loosest of terms) by virtue of being in the same geographical location most of the time and by being mean to each other under the guise of banter.

The sex scenes were full, I skipped over them.

And then the double standards when it came to the PTSD - my dudes, I was ready to throw that series down the moment I realised she was intent on demonising Tam Lin for the things our self insert main character gets to have help and healing for.

I was so angry and watching those videos seriously cheered me up about it. And I am glad I am not alone in my rage.

GO OFF!!!! I halfway relate bc I really liked ToG and when ACOTAR was published everyone was telling me"OMG YOU SHOULD READ IT IT'S A MILLION TIMES BETTER THAN TOG GO RIGHT NOWWW" and then I read it and was like ".......... that was literally everything I hated abt TOG but turned up to 11, what are you talking about" and NO ONE validated me until I saw Cindy's vids a few years later. The found family bit in particular murders me because thESE CHARACTERS HAVE NO CHEMISTRY AS FRIENDS BECAUSE SJM RELIES ONLY ON PHYSICAL ATTRACTION AS SIGN OF AFFECTION SO IDGAF ABOUT THEIR "FRIENDSHIP" UUUUGHHHHH

Ummmm so what's this sjm thing you guys have been talking about? Sorry, I'm really bad at abbreviations.

Sarah J. Maas, one of Internet's fave authors rn. She made her name on mediocre YA fantasy and then shook the world with truly bad adult fantasy. Obligatory plug of the Youtube playlist that will introduce you to these books through very funny means

Omg okay so at work I saw that we had a new SJM book and so I was like "oh is there smut in here?" And I flipped to a page that was literally the guy main character saying something like "he didn't know if [girl mc] had ever been with a male before." IMMEDIATELY put it back and vowed to never be curious again. So glad there's disk horse about it

Good to know ALL of her series utilize the same language. I have so much to say about SJM's males wondering if females are UnthOuchEd i could write another 1000 page book abt it. You made a wise move

Oh my god, don’t even get me started on SJM’s feminism. It’s actually disgusting how her female characters experience SA only for us to get the full perspective of their male love interests!

The way she is convinced she is doing something with her feminist monologues and then turns around and puts that same character through the most sexist unpleasant scenarios ever and gets them saved by the male characters... what a girlboss

the shitty cishet tlt au got me thinking about the REVERSE of that. what if sjm's books were gay and trans. what then

My brain started hurting at the prospect of how to fix SJM's books to be similar in quality to TLT. However I will take this opportunity to once again state my opinion that ToG would have been 96% better if Manon were a lesbian, Lysandra were given an arc to explore her sexuality on her own terms, and Elide were asexual thank you for coming to my ted talk

also enjoying the sjm dunking (my friend loves her books and i always have to contain my hater nature, finally Vindication!!). i also wish she had just done werewolves cause i’d love some good fae novels but i feel like she has defined the “genre” and anything that follows will either be shaped by or compared to her novels

Welcome!! The good thing is that while she DID reshape the landscape of YA and NA, no one is imitating her mythology and instead focusing on pulling from her male interests, romance style, and attempts at feminism, all set within a vague badly developed fantasy setting of various natures. I said "the good thing" and I am now realizing that is not actually good at all but you get my drift I am glad not to be reading about breeding fae

I used to like TOG (i was 13 when they first came out abd didnt know any better) andnit eas fine the books were still coming out. Then ACOTAR happened. It was not what i liked and started to move away. THEN BEYOND THE SHITTY STORIES. SHE FIRED THE EDITOR. IT SHOWED. It went from a typo if anything to stupid plot lines, typos galore and the lack of sense that all comes from someone reading the drafts and going "no". But also, morw diverse readings as i got older really highlighted how much better other books are (The Lunar Chronicals and The Night Circis to name a few - they have issues but no where near as bad as SJMs)

Omg handshake I liked ToG when I was 15 too! I didn't know about the editor thing, but it is not surprising. SJM is one of the rare writers that seem to get worse with every book she writes. YA as a demographic no longer holds much joy for me, but I can still revisit my faves and enjoy them while revisiting SJM's writing just makes me nauseous

Hi! I gotta get in on the SJM discourse. So, SJM is not erotica. I will proudly say I read erotica. These books have 3 sex scenes max over 400+ pages. That's not erotica. However, she's a bad writer, super racist, and has never addressed the problems in her books. I stopped reading after the last ACOTAR. I couldn't even finish TOG. TBH: Erotica has a better plot than anything I've read by SJM.

SCATHING REVIEW!!! You did great, I have nothing to add except good for you for dropping her books~~

The most surprising thing we could see in the next ACOTAR book is someone with a normal body type

I love it how not only does she have the typical big-membered, abs-riddled hypermasculine love interests, but the protagonists themselves are described in a way that would perfectly fit the "men writing women" stereotype

ive hated sjm for a while so im happy to dunk on her but can i ask what started people getting mad at her right now?

Nothing in particular, I was getting some negativity from a SJM fan because I like a problematic character from a different series, and I posted how it made me laugh bc you can't be a SJM fan WITHOUT liking FAR more problematic characters. Since SJM is quite a conversation starter, ppl have been sending me their takes for days now. We are a chatty bunch here on eerna dot com and I love it

hi! just wanted to drop by and say thank you for mentioning the ABO-vibes in SJM's books because i have been thinking the exact same thing ever since i read the first ACOTAR-book a year ago but none of my friends have read it so i have no one to talk to about it. feeling extremely validated rn 😌

You're welcome! Fun fact: When my friends and I played the ACOTAR sex scenes drinking game, one of our conditions was "drink every time there is ABO vibes". Needless to say it was the most often noted condition

SJM's portraying the fae as basically just Humans But Cooler is the entire reason my own WIP is going so hard on the fae as a type of doppelganger monster to humanity with their own incompatible culture. Like imagine taking the vast amount of folklore you could have poured into your sexy faerie books and abandoning it all after getting halfway through one child ballad.

It's why I can't take her worldbuilding seriously. She took everything that makes fae interesting and said "hmmm nah I'll replace it with ABO tropes". Why didn't she just write about werewolves??? I would even take dragons in human forms??? BUT WHY FAE IF YOU WILL JUST GIVE UP ON MAKING THEM FAE. Good for you, make that WIP something she could never imagine

I have never read anything by SJM but I have to say that I’m really enjoying the discourse lolllllll like yeah! call her out!! Good for you guys!!

Djdnsjsjs thankfully this is nothing new anymore, nowadays there are as many SJM haters out there as there are fans, so I feel safe raining criticism upon her. And ur so right for just enjoying the show from the sidelines, I stopped reading her books myself in 2019 and since then I've been relying on the discourse to keep up with her shenanigans which is ten times healthier and funnier

my main issue with SJM is that she glorifies so many issues in her stories that I can’t see past them. (ex: killing off a poc character for the sake of a white girls character arc.) her worldbuilding in ACOTAR was amazing and i absolutely loved it.

one thing that i’ll never forgive is that she started writing the second book of ACOTAR, keeping tamlin as the love interest until she scrapped it and replaced it with creepy rhysand. (this is part one)

pt 2. the first book is literally a retelling of a scottish folk tale. it could have been fine but NOOOO she had to completely butcher one of my favorite stories and ruin janet and tam lin for me

AH RIP! I too am shocked how she can get away with so much imperialistic, racist, perverted shit in her books. She writes about fae 24/7 and somehow fails to grasp the basic mythology behind them. All in all trash