#i really need a moratorium on az

[bookofmirth]

So I initially deleted this because I didn’t want to get into it, but I also think the question is genuine and I wanted to explain my thinking. CW for emotional and physical abuse and sexual assault.

I am tagging @silverlinedeyes​ because this ask concerns them and I don’t appreciate being vagued, whether it’s a blogger or someone answering an ask that mentions me. I try not to vague other people and I’m not perfect but... just getting this all out in the open.

So I can’t speak for everyone who was upset at the initial post comparing Ianthe and Gwyn. Personally, I kind-of grimaced and was mostly confused about what in the world they could possibly have in common and why such a comparison would be necessary. As people, they are fundamentally different. And to me, the comparison is incredibly thin. Eye color and priestesses? How many priestesses have that eye color? And to use that to connect them to a creature we’ve only read about in two sentences in the whole series, a creature we’ve never actually seen on page and know next to nothing about? Basically, the intention or purpose behind the comparison didn’t make sense to me.

Now I’ll be perfectly transparent - I didn’t read the whole post because I could tell that it wasn’t for me. I also didn’t go around vaguing it. It was mentioned in some asks that I got and I tried to limit my commentary on that post and focus on the comparisons I had made, intentionally. Because 1) I can’t speak from the position of a SA survivor, and those are the people that post concerned, and 2) I didn’t fully read it, and 3) I don’t want to vague people! This fandom is divided enough. I know I made a joke after acosf came out how we are all having separate, loud conversations in the same room and refusing to acknowledge the other conversations while somehow responding to one another. And it was kinda funny at first, but now it’s exhausting.

To me, comparing Ianthe, who is universally reviled as a r*pist, and Gwyn, who we know is a SA survivor, is unnecessary. That’s pretty much what it comes down to. Why do we need to do this? What is it telling us about any of the characters? About relationships? I know a lot of people found it anything from distasteful to downright offensive, and while I think that just about anything is fair game when it comes to fictional characters, I also personally think that the intention behind the comparison was confusing. I just personally don’t understand why we would need to talk about those characters in the same breath. What purpose does it serve? Someone who can speak from the position of a SA can please feel free to add on, if comfortable!

The reason that I compare Az and Tamlin is to analyze them as people, as characters, because I see a lot of similarities in who they are on a (currently) fundamental level - their anger, their loneliness, their attempts to restrain their destructive impulses. These are major parts of who they are as people and how they interact with the world. There were red flags present in acotar that I recognized from my personal life and that I can now see in Azriel. Frankly, it concerns me that people see Tamlin as a completely irredeemable villain, while not recognizing that Azriel shares some of the same personality traits. 

Comparing a r*apist and a SA survivor is an unequal comparison. Emotional and physical abuse, on the other hand, tends to be generational. I’m not an expert on a professional or academic level, but I did a quick search on my university’s database, and found this from “Interrupting the Intergenerational Transmission of Violence”, and please note that these lines were the context or background - this article didn’t set out to prove these statements to be true, they are already commonly accepted knowledge and so their research was looking to solve the problem:

Children exposed to domestic violence are at increased risk for a wide range of emotional and behavioural disorders. Conduct disorder, in particular, may ultimately lead to the perpetration of further domestic violence in the next generation. Parental characteristics such as warmth and positive attributions may mitigate the risk for intergenerational transmission of violence.

I think that as a fandom, people really, really tend to mischaracterize Azriel. It bothers me. He’s not soft. I’m sorry, he’s just not. We have multiple examples of him being described, using words like “rage”, “cruel”, “temper”. One of the first posts I ever made in this fandom that got a lot of attention (over four years ago) was trying to correct these mischaracterizations. They keep happening.

There was an icy rage in Azriel I had never been able to thaw. In the centuries I’d known him, he’d said little about his life, those years in his father’s keep, locked in darkness. (ACOMAF)

One moment, Azriel was seated. The next, he’d blasted through Eris’s shield with a flare of blue light and tackled him backward, wood shattering beneath them. “Shit,” Cassian spat, and was instantly there— And met a wall of blue. Azriel had sealed them in, and as his scarred hands wrapped around Eris’s throat, Rhys said, “Enough.” (ACOWAR)

Az didn’t answer. I held his gaze, though. Held that ice-cold stare that still sometimes scared the shit out of me. (ACOFAS)

Az had a vicious competitive streak... quiet and cruel and utterly lethal. (ACOSF)

Azriel stiffened, an outright sign of temper (ACOSF)

These are just a few of the examples, but we can also think about acofas when he gets angry at dinner thinking about how his mother was treated as a servant, when he can’t handle being around people who are happy on Solstice. I could make a whole post but I’m kinda sick of talking about Azriel at this point.

I have experienced an emotionally abusive relationship much like feylin was. I made myself so small, for years, because this person’s anger and anxiety and grief took up so much space in the world. I felt like I had to overcompensate, to not make them feel jealous if I was having a good day, and to not take on my negative feelings if I had a bad day. So I just stopped feeling things. For years. It didn’t go well. I’m still dealing with the aftermath. 

I have also witnessed physical domestic violence, as a child. I don’t think I need to explain further than that.

My fanfiction A Loveless Romantic deals heavily with the feylin abuse, and I only feel comfortable writing it because of my personal experiences. I’ve written posts about Nesta and alcohol and another post that I can’t currently find about why acotar is such a good book because it shows us all of those red flags for abuse before many people knew they were red flags. (If I can find it I’ll reblog.) My point is, when I go into analyses and metas like these, they aren’t just an exercise in “oh hey what if?!” It’s “here is my experience with this topic and so here’s how I read this with that background.”

The comparison between Azriel and Tamlin is deeply personal to me, and I didn’t exactly expect to have to disclose my personal history when making it, but when I see people vaguing about how the comparison “hurts people who have experienced abuse”, hi, OP knows exactly what she’s talking about on a personal level, thanks. So I’m going to keep talking about it, because I know what I’m talking about, and it bothers me that people can’t see it in fiction because I worry that they then won’t be able to see it IRL until it’s too late. I’m going to keep writing my “thinkpieces” because this is a topic I know a lot about, it’s important to me, and it’s something that I think a lot of people can and should learn more about.

#acotar #azriel #tamlin #cw abuse #acosf #ask #anon #i really need a moratorium on az #he no longer exists to me #nor tamlin #mor cassian nesta elain and lucien are the only characters to me