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memryse · 2 years

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So I've just read your Grian and Martyn as narrative foils essay (and it was amazing), and I was wondering if you have any other pairs you find really interesting, based on how their characters complement/contrast with/otherwise parallel each other in some way?

For example I personally find there to be a lot to say about Martyn and Scott, and how they seem similar on the surface and are in some ways, but the way they respond to 'destiny' and the demands of the world are completely opposite to one another (especially in LL), and how that explores willpower – Martyn always following it because he doesn't see defying that as an option (apart from one brief attempt after the fall of the Southlands when he questions the voice, but that never amounts to anything, and he's almost immediately manipulated back under its control), even if it hurts him and even if it causes him to betray others (the Southlands, despite how much he cared for them, and the "after every winter there comes a spring" betrayal plot in Third Life that never took root only because he died beforehand... I'm not sure how far we can consider that, as we only know about it from cc!Martyn, but the seeds of it in Third Life were planted nonetheless) versus Scott being the only one able to defy it because of his conviction in himself and loyalty to his allies in Pearl and Cleo.

Even in Third Life, where those parallels were much less explicit, you still had the contrast between Martyn engaging in the violence the world wanted through following Ren, and Scott standing in opposition to that and just wanting to live a peaceful life with Jimmy, which defies the world's rules in its own way, especially with Jimmy being Red – though the Martyn part is a bit of a stretch I'll admit.

And then in Double Life you have things shaping up in a different way, with Scott and Martyn BOTH not pairing with their soulmates – though with Scott it's by choice and with Martyn it's more circumstance, again left to follow the whims of something other than himself. Also, Scott keeps the bond he forced with Cleo after their meeting, whereas Martyn leaves Pearl.

...anyway, that turned into a sort of analysis on my part, sorry! But yeah, I was curious about whether you had any other pairs of players you viewed as foils, or something else similar.

Thank you! And once again, great meta.

oh this is a very interesting question to entertain me on the train :D and yes i totally agree about scott and martyn, they’re a really interesting pair in terms of willpower. scott is a very active player - not in the sense of going out and getting kills, but in doing what he wants, regardless of the universe’s plans for him. whereas in martyn’s case it’s like that’s what he wants, but he’s always getting caught in someone else’s machinations, or whatever tragedy fate has planned for him next.

as for other pairs… well, not really a pair, but i’d say i’m very interested in the ren-bigb-martyn trio, as i’ve been hinting with my ren bigb posting yesterday 😭 they really do complement each other really well, as well as always seeming to end up involved with one another in some capacity. they’re all wrapped in tragedy and loyalty, or the lack thereof in A Certain Case, BigB. they’re the red army. they’re the shadow alliance: lizzie’s most devoted knight, cleo’s best friend turned betrayer, and the one who betrayed the southlands for them. and now they are two soulbounds and the root cause of the messy scott-pearl-cleo-martyn split. i for one can’t wait to see how they end up killing cleo this time!

also. ok not to martynpost AGAIN (i don’t even post about him that much regularly but by god does he make for interesting framing when writing about traffic stuff so i have many many thoughts) but martyn and impulse!!!! make me froth at the mouth!!!!!!!!!! ok so in 3rd life. as i have already said many times. martyn is The loyal guy. that’s his thing. and impulse is… not. he’s the secret girlfriend who nobody knows who he’s actually allied with. trusted by no one. and ultimately, he’s stabbed in the back himself for a clock. last life, they’re allies, and when you measure all of that up against everything grian does in that series, it’s… yeah. martyn is hurt and betrayed by grian killing jimmy and mumbo. he very much was also betraying the southlands himself, yes, but their ghosts haunt his conscience anyway. and ultimately, he wanted nothing more than for them to be together in the afterlife. his entire character motivation is the southlands, be it betraying them or his underlying deep loyalty to them. but impulse? he’s more loyal than any of them at first! he’s helpful, he truly cares about all of them. he shares martyn’s concern about grian having the wither, though, and ends up lying to grian about one of the skulls. but… in the end, he chooses to stay by grian’s side until the end, siding with him despite everything he did to the southlands. i think impulse in LL just wanted to be loved, to be useful, more than anything, regardless of the cost to his morals or the overall state of his alliances. as long as he had someone.

Ok this would have been longer but uh i spent my entire half an hour train ride answering this and now i have to Do Things (go to pride) lollll

#ask #mae analyses

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moiraineswife · 7 years

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I really love your post about Rhys. I like the character a lot but the fact that he is being constantly put on a pedestal takes away from the character from me. I find the fact that he sacrificed his legion for Myriam and Drakon particularly interesting because who else do we know that sent his friends to potential death? Wasn't that how Andras died? And while Tamlin was not putting himself at risk, the men he sent were part of his court. They were invested in what they were doing. Did Rhys's

legion have any ties to Myriam and Drakon or were they sacrificed for something that primarily affected Rhys? I am not saying that he is as far gone as Tamlin was in some points of the trilogy, but he is definitely not a special snowflake that makes ambiguous choices only when there is no other way.

Right I’m going to say some Even More Unpopular Things here: frankly, I consider what Tamlin did to be more “right” than what Rhys did (IN THIS INSTANCE). I think Tamlin and Rhys contrast-parallel each other a LOT in this series which I’ve written about before which I thought was really interesting until it just got so black and white ‘Rhys is right about everything; Tamlin is wrong about everything’.

Setting aside their relationships with Feyre and Tamlin’s abuse and just stripping this back and looking at it based on ‘two leaders making decisions in war time scenarios’ I think what Rhys did here is infinitely worse than what Tamlin did. And the only reason it might not instantly be read that way is because of how it gets filtered through Feyre’s narrative, the way she condemns Tamlin but the way the novel (this bit is Jurian but it amounts to the same thing - all the characters love and absolve Rhys - as we the reader should too) praises Rhys.

If you strip out the biased reactions though and just look at what they’re doing and why...Rhys is worse.

Both of them are sacrificing their men. Both of them are doing this for a greater good. Rhys is the only character who is actually comfortable in doing this. Tamlin isn’t. Rhys will make small sacrifices that benefit the many and consider this a morally right action. Tamlin will not. (See: him sending Feyre away in ACOTAR despite her wanting to stay and help because he refuses to sacrifice her life to Amarantha even if it will save the rest of Prythian)

So the sentries thing is something that Tamlin struggles with. Tamlin needs control and this manifests itself in several different ways. With Feyre it makes him overly protective and abusive and in trying to keep her safe he smothered her. When it comes to being a leader and matters of war it manifests itself in something more...Noble, I suppose, if entirely impractical.

Rhys and Tamlin are BOTH actually quite self-sacrificing in a lot of ways. (I think Tamlin gets called selfish a lot - and I get it - but I also don’t believe it) Rhys’ form of self-sacrifice involves him making the hard decisions and taking the guilt for them and, for the most part, having himself be the ‘few’ that he chooses to harm in favour of protecting the ‘many’ (mostly his people).

Tamlin is a lot more literal than that. Tamlin quite literally just wants to take everything upon himself. He wants to do everything by himself. He wants to take all of the risks and just get shit done alone. See: the way he marches off to deal with any breaching of court boundaries in ACOTAR, the way he works alone in ACOWAR and doesn’t tell anyone that he’s a double agent, he just gets it done himself.

With regards to the sentries that was one of the cruellest things Amarantha could have done to him tbh. Rhys would have felt guilty as heck sending those sentries out but he’d have been able to justify and rationalise it to himself and he’d have been able to sleep at night because it’s necessary, he has no choice, and it’s for the greater good. Tamlin is driven much more by emotion than Rhys who is driven much more by pragmatism.

The result of all this is that Tamlin stopped ordering the sentries to go over the wall and try and get themselves killed because he couldn’t stand the guilt (selfish, not, right/wrong, that’s where the debate enters into it and makes things INTERESTING because this is one of those rare things the novel doesn’t give us commentary on - we decide how we feel about this and it’s conflicting)

The sentries actually begged Tamlin to let them go over the wall to die and try and give Prythian a bit of hope. He kept refusing and it was only when they got desperate that he allowed Andras to go over the wall where he met Feyre. Andras knew exactly why he was going over the wall, he knew exactly what a shot in the dark this was, he knew that he could die and he knew that that might not be enough to save them. But he went. He chose.

And that’s what’s interesting here because the crux of this matter (for me) is that thing that Rhys gets praised for so much: choice.

Tamlin’s sentries consented to his plan. They knew what they were doing. They knew why. They actively begged Tamlin to let them do it because it was the only shot they had. Andras chose. Andras went over the wall of his own volition. Andras died of his own volition. Andras sacrificed himself whereas Rhys sacrificed his soldiers. There’s a big difference.

Obviously we don’t have the context of what happened with Rhys since we hear about it second-hand from the super-biased source that is Jurian. However I think, like, common sense dictates enough to say how this went down okay. It doesn’t say Rhys’ legion sacrificed themselves on his orders or anything it says that HE sacrificed them. Rhys made that choice. Not his soldiers. I am like 98% sure that if he went to them and just, okay guys we’re going to march into this castle and I’m going to get you all kidnapped, tortured and killed to save this one person, you cool with that? The overwhelming response would have been ‘uh, no???’

Also it doesn’t fit Rhys’ MO to tell people what he’s doing. Rhys makes executive decisions and doesn’t bother explaining his reasons behind them (see: everything UtM, tying the IC to Velaris and refusing to let them leave to save him/to keep them safe (which...is an awful lot like what Tamlin does to Feyre in ACOMAF, just saying) the CoN, his own sacrifice at the end of ACOWAR etc etc etc. Rhys does what Rhys thinks is right. end of story.

Now, both of these actions were, perhaps, necessary. Miryam and Drakon were likely essential to winning the war and Rhys knew that. The deaths of his soldiers were necessary; in the same way that the death of Andras and the other Spring Court sentries were necessary to defeat Amarantha.

This is where the moral debate of ‘was it justified/right/excusable’ should launch but instead ACOWAR tries to clumsily just tell us how it is. Feyre condemns Tamlin for killing the sentries then not standing by them with Ianthe (when he’s backed into a corner); Jurian tells us what a great dude Rhys is for having done this and it takes a reader to sort of sit there and.....Hold up dude, I don’t think so.

But the problem is we have to do that over and over again. The narrative forces us to contradict it in the name of like...common sense over and over and over again. Because Rhys is NOT flawless. And I don’t particularly care how many times the story shoves down my throat what a tragic hero he is, how noble, how selfless, how good, the fact is he’s a ruthless, morally flawed, morally grey bastard and that’s just how it is.

Tamlin and Rhys were set up as deliberate parallels to one another. They are opposites in almost every single regard: appearance, morals, leadership style, their relationships with Feyre, the way their courts are set up, how they think, how they act, how they operate, literally everything. And that’s interesting. Because the only part of this that’s a real clear-cut ‘Rhys is better’ is when it comes to the relationship with Feyre (which is also biased/set-up that way tbh (some of Tamlin’s lines in ACOWAR for example were so outrageously out of character that I just cringed at them - but it’s meant to make him seem like a misogynistic tool to Rhys’ uber feminist which is just...*rubs temples*))

When it comes to leadership style, morality, the choices they make as leaders caught up in a war, the sacrifices that they make, their motivations, intentions and the consequences of their actions, though, that’s all a grey area. Or it SHOULD have been a grey area. I said like twenty times before ACOWAR came out that I thought it would reinforce that greyness between the two of them. Tamlin is not a cardboard cut-out villain (like...every other villain in this series) and never has been.

The dynamic between him and Rhys was compelling and interesting because it was not black and white. They were opposites, they went about things completely differently but it was not a case of ‘this way is right and this way is wrong’ it was a case of ‘these two characters are polar opposites and neither of them is completely right or completely wrong. There is merit and fault in both of them. They are grey characters.

As far as ACOWAR is concerned, for the most part, hideous ooc high lord’s meeting aside, Tamlin’s greyness is reinforced. We’re reminded (sort of) of the things that he does right as well as the things that he does wrong. He’s a grey character. He’s made mistakes but he is trying (I’m talking about all of this in terms of him being high lord of spring NOT in terms of his relationship with Feyre, just to make that clear, there’s no grey area there for me)

Tamlin’s arc should have, and did, focus on his actions as a high lord/leader. The problem was it wasn’t so much a sustained arc more as...a series of stepping-stone moments that were not connected or fleshed out enough to give him a proper redemption storyline. Instead I kind of ended up with whiplash being pulled back and forth between ‘he’s good, no he’s bad, no he’s good, no he’s bad, no he’s good’ - ‘he’s against us, he’s with us, he’s against us, he’s with us’ etc. It was sloppy and messy and, like almost everything else in this book, there was some real potential here it just wasn’t executed well at all.

This is what should have happened with Rhys but in reverse. We should have seen him making questionable morally flawed decisions (see: the CoN fiasco) and being reminded that he is not flawless, he is a grey character as well, he has both faults and merit and at the end of the day he and Tamlin are both trying their best to make the most of the shitty hand of cards they’ve been dealt in this war and this world.

Unfortunately what I got was the set-up of Rhys being a morally grey character once again...and zero follow-through. Where the narrative mostly left Tamlin’s greyness up to a reader to decide, it was shoved down our throats how Good Rhys is, how he is The Best Of Them (*gags a little*). So they’re both grey characters but someone comes along like Alice in Wonderland and tries to paint Rhys white. Most unfortunately that doesn’t actually change who or what he is it just makes me annoyed and frustrated because no, sorry, he’s not a great guy and I’m not buying what you’re selling.

Rhys is a good character. Tamlin is a good character. They are both morally grey individuals and the dynamic between them is actually endlessly fascinating if you sit down and think about it yourself. The dynamic between them as it’s written in ACOWAR is endlessly frustrating because it SHOWS them as morally grey characters but then it TELLS us that Rhys is really great and is above all possible contempt or questioning with regards to his actions. So it falls flat and it feels forced and bland and oh god this book could have been so good and instead I’m just sitting here like W H Y.

Bottom line as far as I see it: if SJM’s dedication to fawning over her own characters and making them (I include Feyre in this too since she suffered from this perfect airbrushing like Rhys, just not as much) perfect and beyond any possible criticism hadn’t prevailed over her dedication to telling a compelling story and writing INTERESTING instead of perfect characters this book could have been something special. And instead it was something bland, empty and forced and this is where I’m at.

TL;DR: Let the characters speak for themselves. It is not an author’s job to tell me what to think and how to feel about their story and their characters. At a certain point you’ve got to trust your readers enough (and yourself, I guess) to read things in the way you want them to be read. Don’t spoonfeed them. Don’t force things. Don’t airbrush your characters to try and make them above criticism. It doesn’t work. We just end up with this mess. - Lauren’s problems with ACOWAR in a nutshell.

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