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White Girl Fantasy : Fantasy/fantasy romance/ YA typically written by white women that often contains a veneer of feminism or progressiveness that falls apart upon closer inspection. This specific type of fantasy is often eaten up for its "spiciness" and use of popular tropes or buzzwords such as "enemies to lovers" "morally grey love interest" "touch her and you die" and "only one bed". Often these works contain the following:

Pro militarism

Weird/poor racism allegories

Bio essentialism

The author just being really vague and weird about racially ambiguous characters.

White Feminism TM

Strong Female Characters TM

Lack of nuanced or culturally aware diversity (we should be past just including a brown person here and there)

Maas comes to mind but like, feel free to add to this

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Me. Every time I engage in ship discourse

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The chokehold this fictional man has on me isn't even funny anymore.

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BMO Nintendo Switch Dock made by TinkerMaker

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Hello! I'm curious about your opinion when it comes to Feyre's personality when being human vs. High Fae. I feel that when she was a human she was more genuine and down to earth, but when she became High Fae she became more pretentious and put herself on a pedestal? Idk if it's because due to Rhysand's manipulation because she once said that she still remained human by heart but I don't really see it anymore.

Hi anon! Welcome!

I LOVE book 1 Feyre, but then this happens subsequently, and... this happens to be one of my biggest issues with Feyre post-ACOTAR. In my tags and posts about her personality shift, I've referred to it as "white woman syndrome," in that Feyre's behavior truly exemplifies how white women act with regards to oppression obviously not all white women but enough of them and the mindset of white feminists in particular. In short, Feyre feels, as do white women, that only her oppression and struggle in the matter, and only the people who are currently thwarting her are bad, and nobody else's problems or oppression are worth addressing or correcting. Feyre doesn't want real systemic change for a better world where humans and lesser fae and female High fae are truly treated as equals, she just wants better treatment for herself. Mrs. Feyre Archeron doesn't fight for a redistribution of power so that Lesser fae aren't, uh, lesser, or change in the magic system so that females can be chosen as High Lady. The different types of oppression in fae society are never challenged. Feyre is just given the authority fae males have (not really OBVIOUSLY as Rhysand still makes all the ultimate decisions in the Night Court even about Feyre's own body but this is what Sarah tried to write so we'll go along with this understanding for a minute).

That's it. Like you said, Feyre put herself on a pedestal, believing she deserves the authority the High Lords have rather than attempting to change society as a whole. It's because Sarah is a white feminist and cannot help writing Feyre through that lens, that oppression is bad only in that it hinders the white protagonist from being all powerful. The oppression in Prythian sucks not because oppression is BAD but because Feyre thinks that she, and she alone, deserves authority and power and her oppression stops her from getting it. Oppression is not bad because it's oppression, it's bad because it keeps Feyre from being High Lady. It's white feminism 101--only the oppression that affects white women (misogyny) is bad, because it keeps them from having the power white men have, therefore no other issues like racism or homophobia are worth fixing. In the eyes of white feminists, misogyny is bad because it keeps white women from being in the position of white men--the top oppressor. And just like white women irl, Feyre wants to move into the position of oppressor, not truly correct the issues with society as a whole.

And this explains her change in behavior in the books. Feyre gradually grows more selfish as the books go on, because Feyre is the embodiment of white feminism and ultimately wants to move into the role of oppressor, not truly correct systemic oppression. So we're told Feyre is kind, and she really is in book 1 and in the beginning of book 2, but after gaining power she relishes being cruel, enjoys using and abusing her power. She goes to brutalize people in the Court of Nightmares alongside Rhysand, mindrapes Tamin's innocent sentries, uses her daemati abilities to make Ianthe bash her hand, tricks people into worshipping her all while patting herself on the back for how amazing she is at doing so.

Again, this shift happens because Feyre, over the course of ACOMAF, gradually decides that oppression is not bad in and of itself, but that its bad because oppression keeps HER from having power. So why the shift? She didn't change immediately when she was changed into a High Fae, so that's not it. She develops white woman syndrome because of Rhysand. Because he grooms her to be like that, grooms her into desiring the role of oppressor instead of wanting to get rid of oppressive constructs in the first place. Feyre admits as much throughout ACOMAF--over and over again we hear how her "perfect mate" helped "put her back together" and "healed her" and "saved her from the darkness." So yes, it's because of Rhysand's manipulation that Feyre becomes very self-centered towards the end of this series. He grooms her into becoming this way, and while we can discuss the racism and white feminism all day (and we SHOULD) it's also so, so, painfully TRAGIC that he succeeded in grooming her so well.

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aussies don't say mate as much as sj/m's characters do

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I think one thing that bothers me about Feyre's character is her change of opinion about the faeries when she realizes that Tamlim and Lucien aren't going to kill her… Like, the reason for her hatred of the faeries wasn't because of the fact them enslaving humans? That made sense, the distrust and anger she felt made sense… But when she started to like Tamlim and feel relaxed, that changed, and it bothered me a little… And it got worse with the next books… It's like she's erased everything bad they've done and just forgotten or forgiven, you know? forgotten that they are dangerous. And when she was turned into one of them, a fae, it got to the point where she defended their species over humans, as if humans had no reason to be distrustful because she had spent, I don't know, a few months with them and in the really they are good people and actually it's the fault of humans for feeling that way for such a lovely species, isn't it?

and like, NO FEYRE, they HAVE to be suspicious of everything they say, because in the few months you spent there you were deceived thousands of times….. What happened to the woman who said she still had a human heart ? I genuinely thought that in the next few books she was going to fight for humans, for the people of the old village she lived in. I don't know. I feel like if she recognized that there are some good faeries, but that doesn't mean everyone is, that would be much better. Because yes, Tamlin and Lucien are nice, Alis is nice, but that doesn't mean the others wouldn't kill a human being, in fact she was mentioned several times in the books about many faeries who would hurt her for being HUMAN. I figured that instead of accepting everything from the fae, and pretending like she was already born a fae and forgotten that she was once human, she'd shared a bit of the human way of doing things, since that's part of her, right?

Have you ever imagined her in Velaris, in that cute and colorful land full of love and out of nowhere a fae talks nonsense about the human race? and that causes a shock of reality in her? Because among them, a lot of horrible things already happen, a lot of prejudice, but when it comes to humans, they are superior to everyone.

so, yeah… I really wanted a Feyre who was more aware of the faeries and that not everything is roses, but recognizing that they suffer yes, many things, but they are also the species that enslaved humanity and created a wall and left the worst part for humans; that they are the species that took away every bit of human culture; who took away their gods and customs to the point that none of Feyre's generation remembers.

idk but maybe thats just me :p

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I've been thinking that the reason the ACOTAR fandom is so toxic is because Mrs. Maas applied real world standards to a fantasy series, creating a conundrum where some characters are allowed to exist in and operate within a fantasy-based morality (like Rhysand, the Inner Circle, and Feyre) whilst others are held up to a stricter, real-world morality and are vehemently critiqued in text for failing to meet the moral standards of our world (Tamlin, Nesta, even Lucien), leaving fans of the latter group of characters to call out the hypocrisy in text for their characters being evaluated by standards that the former aren't held to whilst fans of the former set of characters happily indulge in such hypocritical writing even while promoting this series as an excellent example of handling of real-world themes like abuse; but now I think it's more than that.

Feyre has all the powers--she can shapeshift AND read minds AND control all the elements AND control light AND shadow. Everyone loves her, men of all races want to have sex with her, she can fetishize men of color and have mixed children and participate in cultural appropriation without consequence; she can brutalize men of color and look down on and belittle the appearance of women of color whenever she wants with impunity, because she is the eternal victim. She can do no wrong; people can only wrong her. She can never hurt anyone; people can only hurt her. Feyre is all powerful, but she's an eternal victim--she's a white woman's power fantasy. That's why this series reeks of white feminism so badly. Feyre is a white woman's power fantasy.

But some white women, and many women of color, don't identify with that power fantasy--especially Feyre's "being able to oppress others with impunity" schtick--so they reach out for other characters instead. But because Feyre is the eternal victim, because Feyre is the embodiment of white womenhood, that means many of the other characters are written as Feyre's oppressors or antagonists, and the white women who identify with Feyre hate them, because how dare those characters and their stans ruin their power fantasy? How dare those characters impede Feyre, their self-insert, from being the embodiment of idealized white womanhood?

So those characters, and those who stan them, are resented. In this essay, I will--

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I. HATE. IN-TEXT. CITATIONS.

Not just when I'm writing a paper, but when I'm READING a textbook it looks SO messy (Rick-Astley, 1969, p. 420) and it's SO distracting, (Morbius, 2022) and SO disruptive (Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, & Rudolph, 1964.) to my reading and (Bird, Grouch, Monster, & Monster, 1997 ) learning process. And why are some of them SO FUCKING (According, 2007; To & All, 1991; Known, Laws, & Of, 2378; Aviation, 57 B.C.E.) LONG???

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I am BEGGING HOTD fic writers who post on A03 to PLEASE tag incest correctly. If OC is a Velaryon/Strong getting with a Targaryen that's STILL incest. Like seriously I'll exclude incest when searching the Aemond/OC tag but I still see about twenty different stories about Visenya Velaryon about to get dicked down by her uncle 😭😭

#hotd #house of the dragon #a song of ice and fire #aemond targaryen #aemond x oc #Targaryen #velaryon #princess rhaenyra #aegon targaryen #daemon targaryen #velaryon reader

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Aemond: Are our nephews looking at us?

Aegon: No.

Aemond: That won’t do…

Aegon: Wha—

Aemond: Time to make a scene. *punches Aegon*

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hi darling, just wanted to ask what your opinion on cassian in acosf is. if you've already said/wrote about this could you link it! i personally, prefer neris but you made me like cassian again with your fic lol. i loved your fics and i just wanted to connect with you. have a wonderful day my love.

I alternate between fanon Cassian and Eris (with a bit of Lucien thrown in and maybe a sprinkling of Azriel). I'm glad you liked the fics! I will be writing more Neris soon.

I think I have ranted about that book several times but here are a few Cassian centric complaints:

Prioritising Mor over Nesta We've seen time and time again that Cassian puts Mor's feelings ahead of Nesta's despite saying she's like a sister and there's no feelings between them. I'm still not over him dropping her hand the moment Mor came into view after she'd bandaged his wrist. She goes to Illyria and essentially gives Nesta a telling off for not training (as though she has any authority over Nesta) and Cassian stays quiet.

Prioritising everyone over Nesta Cassian cannot even hear a bad word said about Rhys because the blinkers are well and truly on. He is aggressive towards Nesta when she says something bad about him. The NC is not a dictatorship and Nesta should be allowed to voice her opinions without Cassian at her throat. There were no mating instincts at all. When Rhys threatens her life, Cassian doesn't show the same ferocity to protect her. In a previous book, when Azriel argues with Feyre, Rhys shoots him down and is immediately backing Feyre up. We got none of that with Cassian; Nesta was always in the wrong.

Nesta became his sex doll They locked her up due to her reliance on casual sex... so Cassian then fills that void and has casual sex with her. I might have not minded it so much if there was at least after care or some genuine tender moments, but it never happened. I think in one scene, Cassian pulls out the second he's finished and leaves her on the bed. It's terrible decision making on Cassian's part and a power imbalance. Further, when she has been attacked by the kelpie, he acknowledges that she looks awful following the attack, but instead of rejecting her advances (her using sex to cope with trauma) he proceeds to have rough sex with her. It's vile.

Delighting in her pain Nesta falls down the stairs trying to leave and Cassian mocks her for it. She is in pain and he laughs. Knows that she's starving herself but withholds sugar when she actually wants to eat. He forces her on the hike where she carried the heaviest bag and pushes her until she collapses rather than noticing she's struggling. When Feyre says Rhys is delighted to hear Cassian is keeping her on the hike for a few more days, Cassian admits he is also delighted. It is so, so disgusting.

Their whole relationship It's based upon sex and grinding Nesta down until she's the woman that slots in nicely to the IC. There weren't really any cute scenes of them being a couple or learning to be friends. They only dance together when Cassian orders Eris to move and Nesta feels guilty that Eris insults him. Nesta is so often used by the IC to further their plans, and Cassian rarely speaks up against it. He throws a temper tantrum in ACOFAS when she doesn't want his gift. Throws another in public when she freaks out about being his mate. They're not friends at all. They have so little in common. SJM could have had Cassian learning about what Nesta liked e.g. reading her smutty books or making a friendship bracelet together or visiting one of her taverns just to listen to the music. Instead, Nesta had to change herself to suit him and lose her powers because of Rhys' mistake. She never had to atone for anything and now she's trapped in this Stepford Wives life!!!!

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AND DID YOU NOTICE MOC or at least their features ARE ALWAYS used for the white blonde girls love interests

they want our men but they don't want us and i'm always like??? Who do you think MAKES those men?

There's a reason y'all characters don't end up with the blonde guys and nobody is brave enough to say it

Hi anon!!!!

[I totally went on a rant. Also since I got similar asks broaching the subject, I just ranted on this ask. lolol sorry anon❤️]

Let's talk about this. I literally have so much to say about this topic because it's a very big problem with SJM's writing, and it's....super racist. There's the Nehemia problem, the Tarquin/Helion/Lucien problem, but I think SJM's handling of this particular topic is super racist. SJM likes pieces and parts of 'other' cultures. So--she implements them into the story. The Night Court is 'exotic' because SJM inserts nonwestern cultures into the story, and the white characters (Mor, Rhys, Feyre) are able to dabble in these because their 'cool.' The Night Court is heavily South Asian-coded, but none of the characters are themselves.

And she also does this with...features. The Illyrians and the discourse around them are pretty much a consequence of 'PoC-fishing.' The dark skin, huge muscles, and 'wildness' that the Illyrians are given make them sexually appealing. But they aren't PoC, the author doesn't see them as PoC (i.e. the infamous Pinterest board). But then on the other hand....they are. But this "diversity" is like a safety net and fantasy. It allows SJM to ambiguously describe the Illyrians and give them a 'proximity' to nonwhitenesss that makes them sexually appealing, and cool, but it still allows for the closeness to whiteness --which makes them civilized (our main three Illyrian protagonists). The idea of blackfishing which "creates a paradox of voluntarily emulating aesthetics for oneself but villainizing it for others," (Kumar 75), SJM allows her white/ambiguous characters to participate in cultures they'll gladly disparage. But their whiteness or distance from that culture allows them to move away from the 'savageness.'

But the women operate differently in this paradigm. Proximity to nonwhiteness does not make the woman more desirable in this dynamic (i.e. in the same manner in which we see colorism work) -- so the Illyrian women (or woman, since Emerie is the only autonomous Illyrian woman we meet), are more rigidly described as PoC (and she is given a more concrete connection to a PoC culture via the Dawn Court). But this does not make them beautiful -- her features are 'striking' and 'interesting' -- but not desirable, or beautiful. And if the WoC is beautiful, she's bitter or mean.

And then there is that dynamic between the definite PoC needing to defer to their ambiguously described 'white counterparts, which I write about here.

Being definitively a MoC + WoC always ensures that SJM needs to 'humble' that character, or humiliate them. For MoC, the features maes them 'desireable,' but their nonwhiteness makes them cowardly. The nobility is truly found in their proximity to whiteness.

Then there's this very Aphra Behn-esque approach that SJM takes with these characters, in which the ability to empathize with them is only because of their proximity to whiteness. Cassian and Az are 'good' because their aligned with the 'sleek and polished' Rhysand whose more or less, a tan white man. Rhys is associated with Velaris and the NC, and that makes him refined. In Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, A Royal Slave, the titular character is defined essentially as a white man in a black man's body: he's black, but his proximity to classical whiteness makes him noble. The ability to counteract his enslavement/inferioty is to essentially align him with ‘civility’ and which is just whiteness. Pacheco reiterates that this tactic, "more often than not amounted to Europeanizing the African, allowing him to live up to an exacting standard of European refinement,"(492). Essentially, Rhys is sexy because he's Illyrian, but his nobility exists separate from that -- same with Cass and Az. The Illyrians as a collective or barbaric and bad, the batboys exist as a pinnacle of their entire race. It's super odd. The story essentially is trying to argue that the ENTIRE RACE OF ILLYRIANS believes in this idea of women's inferiority and that only three warriors in the entirety of this race actually view women as human beings. And even though Rhys is y'know the leader, SJM potrays them as rabid dogs who can't even show their women common decency. And their prowess in battle is purely there for Rhys to be...sexy. Other than that, the Illyrians have no culture. Nothing beyond violence, sex, and strength.

I think Rhysand/Aelin/Bryce are usually the worst offenders of this binary. Aelin's 'enslavement' and access to the nonwhite oppressed is juxtaposed with her blood-born nobility and her 'blue-green-gold' eyes. Nehemia's nobility and ability to be a main player is 'corrupted' by her blackness. She's a princess but her definite blackness makes her fodder. Rhysand's childhood in the Illyrian steppes makes him 'relatable' and 'down to earth,' but his NC background (i.e. his whiteness) juxtaposes this. He's this impossible best of both worlds. Bryce has this fantastical 'gold-dusted skin' but...she's white. But it's 'cute' so it remains.

And then we get to SF which really complicates these problems. Because the idea that the Illyrians become a PoC community makes the problems, I've just listed twenty times worse. Because then it takes these problems away from the realm of the abstract and makes them dangerously racist and problematic. Feyre's ability to 'morphe' into a PoC woman for sex and to make an 'Illyrian' child becomes even worse than it already is. Nesta and Feyre changing their uterus to that of an oppressed WoC, become again, even more violently racist than it already is. Feyre's entire appropriation of 'Illyrian' culture is...dreadful.

And either way the Illyrians and the MoC in SJM's work period will always fit into these racist categories because it just is. Whether they become definitively PoC or they continue to be a Caricature of PoC they still fall into the trap. If they are PoC, then they still fit the whole 'MoC humiliation ritual' and if they are merely masquerading, then they again fall into SJM need to like fish for the 'desirable' parts of MoC (i.e. them as sexual beings).

At this point, I think these tropes are such an unconscious part of SJM's writing because she reproduces them in pretty much all of her stories. And...I also think that FBAA does this on multiple fronts too, but I know that would make this post even longer. I feel like I have more to say, but I'm pretty sure it will come out in other anons. And since I reference PoC 'fishing' -- I'd recommend reading "Ain’t Got Enough Money to Pay Me Respect’: Blackfishing, Cultural Appropriation, and the Commodification of Blackness.” by Maha Ikram Cherid, which talks about blackfishing/cultural appropriation (and white I derived PoC fishing from.

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met gala this, met gala that, all I know is that if helion and lucien attended they’d be the best dressed every single year and I don’t accept criticism on this

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