gabilina

[gabilina]

Okay, but how about Rowan and Chaol? who’s the best one?

I think everyone knows I would die for Kale and I would throw R0wan off a cliff into a pit of fire at this point I mean, my banner for this blog has always been “Chaol Westfall Defense Squad” sooo if you didn’t know before now you know. It’s been a while since I’ve read any T0G content, so this answer may not be as thorough as the Rice vs L/ucien post, but let’s see what respect I can put on the name of my king. I’ll divide the comparison into three parts again, but this time it’ll be: literary merit as a character and a person, retcons, and narrative preference for R0wan over lettuce boy.

So in every respect, R0wan is lukewarm dirty water to Kale’s richly steeped hot tea, but let’s talk about them first as people/characters. As with Rice and L/ucien, there’s nothing particularly interesting about R0wan while Kale makes mistakes, develops, and has complex relationships and backstory. R0wan just pops up the fuck out of nowhere three books in with no personality and a backstory that is hard to connect to. His main thing is that he once had a mate named Liria, but the concept of mates hadn’t really been introduced until H0F, and we know nothing about Liria and we have/will never see her on the page, so there’s no reason to be invested in anything about that scenario. R0wan goes through no development. He never disagrees with Celery (unless it’s something toxically masculine, like how close she should stand to another man). He doesn’t have any personal goals outside of her. There’s a lot more going on with Kale, contrarily. At this point, Kale’s been around for two books. We’re invested in him as a character, in his relationships with Celery and Dorito, in his impending face-off with his father (which never happened because SJ/M forgot about it). Similar to L/ucien, Kale has conflicting loyalties between his liege and his values. Dorito and Kale’s relationship already had tension before Celery arrived, but when she entered the picture she kinda changed their friendship and they probably became even closer because of her. I just think that before Celery went to Mistward, the three of them had a really fun dynamic that certainly had the potential to be complex in the hands of another writer. I also think his inner conflict in H0F, during which he came to terms with his friends being magical, was not where I would have taken him had I been his creator, but it’s infinitely more interesting than being in R0wan’s head because at least something’s HAPPENING with Kale. Then there comes the ending of Q0S, which could have been an excellent opportunity for more diversity and character development for Kale if SJ/M hadn’t taken the most ableist route possible with his character.

Now, onto retcons. The fact that R0wan literally ruined the entirety of T0G and probably SJ/M’s entire career alone should be enough to confidently say Kale is better than R0wan. To me, R0wan has always seemed to be SJ/M’s boring attempt to replace Kale. R0wan has the same level of broodiness but with all the interesting parts (a backstory, a family, conflicting opinions, dynamic relationships with characters around him, etc) sucked out. With R0wan’s introduction came the unholy union of R0wan and Alien, the most obnoxious ship in YA right after Failsand. It also brought upon us the fae, which overwhelmed the remainder of the T0G series with sloppy worldbuilding and the highly problematic and stupid mating system, and followed SJ/M into both AC0TAR and CCity. The fae obsession ramped up the ship wars and toxicity in the T0G fandom, splintering all the Kale and Dorito fans from the Ratalien shippers and ultimately the fandom, and subjecting Kale to terrible writing. Kale’s demotion from Potential Endgame Love Interest, contemporaneous with the Malide Q0S plot, also meant a rise in Chaorian shippers, so SJ/M felt the need to force everyone even further OOC and into a pathetic raft of a ship in E0S. Thus, the introduction of R0wan caused Man0rian, C.haorene/C.haoryn, and El/orcan, and the complete lack of significant LGBTQ+ representation in SJ/M’s body of work. So not only is Kale just a better person and character with an actual meaningful and interesting purpose, but I also largely view R0wan as the reason why so many people fell out of love with Mess’s work and she started to decline as a writer.

Finally, the narrative preference for R0wan over Kale: Kale was a whole ass main character in the first three books of T0G. What SJ/M did to him is the equivalent of if JKR decided to make Ron a Death Eater who wanted to kill Hermione in PoA, blamed him for Cedric’s death because he was on the Quidditch pitch when Harry came back with Cedric’s body, wrote him out of OotP to go on a road trip with Pansy Parkinson, and replaced him with Dean Thomas. It’s horrendously unprofessional and stupid writing for an author to decide in the middle of a series that they don’t like a character and then force him OOC in an attempt to manipulate the audience into disliking and forgetting about him as well. None of SJ/M’s decisions for Kale’s character have made sense for like five books. Also, Kale is just the first in a long pattern of characters being held to different standards for their behavior. In Q0S, although he was on incredibly good terms with Alien at the end of C0M, Alien still treats him like trash because she wrongly blames him for Nehemia’s death (which in E0S was confirmed to be Nehemia’s own decision, which… SJ/M honestly fuck you), and she doesn’t let up until he apologizes to her. R0wan on the other hand can do no wrong. He tortures people and acts like an abusive misogynist, but Alien tells him it’s okay because he’s fae. He is rewarded with her love and royal titles. Dorito is still a treasure of SJ/M’s (not as much as R0wan, but still), judging by the fact that she still gushes about his and Rowboat’s hotness at events to this day and they both have magical powers while Kale is just a lowly human. You can really tell SJ/M hates a character if they don’t undergo a super OP magical transformation halfway through the series or if she doesn’t call them sexy at every waking opportunity. It’s so transparent. Oh and we can’t forget the iconic event that was SJ/M literally not putting him in an entire fucking book and instead shoving him and an underdeveloped WOC into an Orientalist consolation prize of a book, then having him cheat on her with another WOC who was grossly ableist to him. Wow remember at the beginning of the post when I said this wouldn’t get as long as the first one? Jokes. Anyway, suffice it to say I like Kale so much more than R0wan and I always will.

[gabilina]

I was actually thinking about how SJM has never really done right by Dorian? In book 1 she has him fall in instalove with C/A to make her seem special, but she comes off as a user and him as dim. Then he pines over C/A because she likes Chaol, and they BOTH treat him like garbage and essentially abandon him. Then he gets happiness with Sorscha but she dies. Then he’s enslaved. THEN he falls victim to SJM’s Masculine Male Males complex. He’ll always be the one who was treated the worst for me.

Oh Dorian. He is one of many characters I wish SJ/M had written better. I’m still head of the Chaol Westfall Defense Squad, but that doesn’t mean I dislike (my memory of) Dorian. I originally liked Celorian and Chaolaena as foils to each other/as predecessors to Chaolaenorian ahahahahah if only that had ever been a viable option. Why Mess. WHY jfeoifoiipg. He’s a sweet boi in T0G-H0F. Despite the contrived scenario in which it was spoken, one of my favorite lines of his is “You cannot pick and choose which parts of her to love.” (My other favorite Dorian-related quote is WITCH KILLER THE HUMAN IS STILL INSIDE HIM. I love an iconic emo witch queen.) I honestly liked the exploration of his darker side in Q0S; one of my favorite tropes is when a softie/comic relief character goes through a dark stint (like Stiles in Teen Wolf or John Silver in Black Sails). I don’t remember the minutiae of the first books because I read them eons ago at this point, so I don’t recall Celery and Kale treating him badly, nor do I recall the way Dorian apparently exercised his class privilege over Sorscha in H0F?? But I take other antis’ word for it because a lot of you all have read the books more recently than I did. I still feel like Sorscha got the shorter end of the stick relative to Dorian, because ya know she lived and violently died in direct service of his arc, but I agree that he went through some Times in that fourth book. I absolutely hate what Mess did with Dorian in E0S. He’s barely even recognizable, and his journey becomes so fruitless. He never progresses from the self-hating, dominating, transphobic asshole; he never finds inner peace or makes amends with Chaol and everything they went through. It just ends. I can’t say with full confidence that Dorian got the worst treatment of the entire cast (I still think it’s Chaol, Nehemia, and Sorscha), but you could surely make a compelling argument for that. All the characters got fucked over, but in terms of the spotlight, narrative satisfaction, and characterization of the ones who lived through all the books, Dorian is probably in the top 3.

[gabilina]

Ch/aol's treatment (And Neh/emia's death) were the two things that killed 90% of my interest for these books. And I read Ch/aol's arc like this: SJ/M got bored with him because her precious darling Alien needed an immortal broody asshole as boyfriend and she later wrote T0D mostly as a consolation prize for that part of her fandom that was angry with Ch/aol's treatment in Q0S. The sad thing is, she still couldn't help it because the real Ch/aol would have never treated Nesrin like that. (1/2)

And she still couldn’t help it because the real Ch/aol would never treat Nesrin like that and would never put up with Irene’s treatment. The sad thing is, Ch/aol and Cel/ery had more chemistry than any other couple post H0F and their romance was perfect for YA (2/2)

Hi Marta! Kale’s character assassination was a big turn-off for me too. All around bad ableist writing that fucked over his fanbase. Back in the C0M-Q0S days, a lot of Cha/olaena and Cel/orian shippers jumped ship because they felt that SJ/M had sacrificed all that relationship/character development from the first books for R0wan. I agree with that, even though I didn’t officially give up on SJ/M until E0S/T0D. I’ve seen it convincingly argued by both Cha/olaena and Cel/orian shippers that SJ/M meant for one of the two ships to be endgame before R0wan came into the picture. Cel/orians used to argue that Celery was meant to marry D0rian and become queen of A/darlan (before she became a lost princess), and Cha/olaenas used to argue that Kale and Celery’s connection was deeper than D0rian and Celery’s, and of course there was the infamous “I’ll always choose you” at the end of C0M. Either way, R0wan popped the fuck out of nowhere and threw the entire balance of the series out of wack.

Even though R0wan was apparently in Q/ueen of Glass, his entry into the published story and the endgame was very inorganic and poorly written. If SJ/M wanted/knew him to be endgame, she should have foreshadowed it and planned the Ch/aolaena and Cel/orian fallouts better. Before R0wan, people were absolutely enamored of both Kale and D0rian. Kale polled as the most popular love interest by a wide margin throughout C0M to Q0S (don’t quote me on this because I can’t find the source, but it was on Mess’s Twitter like 5 years ago), and people loved Ch/aorian of course. Knowing Mess’s tendency to overwrite and control her readers’ every thought about her faves, I completely see H0F/Q0S as a response to the Kale and Ch/aorian fandom love. R0wan is basically a flatter, completely static version of Kale, after all. Kale weirdly becomes anti-magic in H0F when that was hardly in evidence in the first two books. He becomes unrecognizable in Q0S, and his arc focuses on learning how to apologize to Alien for “killing” N/ehemia. I swear, she blames Kale more for her murder than she does, you know, N/EHEMIA’S ACTUAL MURDERER. And Alien never apologizes to Kale for unreasonably blaming him and acting like a tyrant, even after she realizes Kale had nothing to do with N/ehemia’s death. It makes no sense. SJ/M very clearly fell out of love with Kale, and later D0rian, which as a writer I kind of understand. But also as a writer I understand that if I fall out of love with a character it’s my job to either remove them organically out of the story or bring out the traits that made me write the character in the first place. SJ/M does neither of these, and instead forces the characters OOC so the audience either dislikes them as well or stops reading her books and she has an excuse to treat them terribly.

[gabilina]

What are your thoughts on Yrene as a character? I always thought she was just a better done version of Sorscha personally. Was interesting in the novellas and also when she first met Chaol, ultimately what ruined her was HAVING TO FUCKING GIVE HER A SHIP LIKE WTF. Jesus that was so stupid. Chaol should have just died when the King attacked him, would have been a bomb was ending. Hate that stupid healing bond between him and Yrene….

Hey anon, so I redacted the last part of your ask—for anyone’s future reference, please don’t send asks with derogatory terms in them. Even if we’re criticizing Mess, we can still be respectful.

Thoughts on Irene: I couldn’t get through more than half of T0D—I didn’t get past the scene where she forced him to be an example for her students without his consent—so the Irene I know best is the one from the short story. I read TAB like six years ago at this point though, meaning she’s mostly just a blur for me (and apparently Celery victim-blamed her or some nonsense). I really can’t separate Irene from the racism and ableism of T0D, so I got no enjoyment out of her return to the story. So on that basis alone, plus general characterization, I like S0rscha better. The concept of characters being introduced at the very beginning and then coming in when they’re needed several installments later is very fun, which is why I liked TAB when I first read it, but the reasons T0D exists is so Mess could write her random healing-Kale plot and dish out last-minute diversity points with the southern continent. So the fun was sucked out for me. I also like the concept of a healer whose education is funded by a stranger’s act of kindness. But I hate the way Irene is executed. Plus, The Assassin and the Healer was my least favorite of the short stories because it had the least arc to it. I’m glad Kale survived (Kale Westfall defense squad 5ever), but rather than healing him, SJ/M should have just kept him a badass with a disability. I do agree that everything about his and Irene’s romance, plus his and Nesrin’s breakup leading to Nesrin getting together with the prince, was super fucking contrived and dumb though.

[gabilina]

you know what kills me about the chaol---laena/row---aelin thing? c/c had chemistry. they had a decent build up. they faced challenges. their relationship grew. r/a have none of that. it basically sprang out of no where and it's just full pf innuendos and smut and thats *it*. thats the whole relationship. Mess knew how to write a romance, and she sacrificed it because Hot Fae Smut was better, and carried that onto ac0tar. and it kills me.

Totally agree! There’s nothing dynamic or 3D about Alien and Rowboat’s relationship, especially because Rowboat doesn’t have a personality besides being broody and loving Alien. Alien herself also gets scrubbed of personality once she makes her transformation from Celery to Alien. So neither party develops, nor are they in conflict (which is not to say they should be constantly arguing or hateful to each other, but more that they should challenge each other or have some sort of tension, ie Katniss and Peeta’s different strategies to appease Snow, Ned and Cat’s different strategies to appease Robert and Cersei etc). Relationship tension for any ship doesn’t just end when they get together. The first stage of tension is “will they/won’t they.” Then the next stage of tension is usually either “they did, now they have other problems to face together,” “they did, now there’s a third person in the mix,” or “they did, now they’re physically separated/they broke up for some reason.” R0walien is none of those three. It’s just “they did, and at best now they’re obsessed with each other.” I genuinely will never understand why SJ/M or R0walien shippers find that compelling or organic.

[gabilina]

Adding to your "Kale being hated for doing his job" thing. I remember a scene in Q0S where Ae/lin literally holds against him the time he let the Duke force her to bow to D0rian. In book 1. When they'd just dragged a filthy assassin who made sport of killing their people before the Crown Prince. When they weren't even friends. But she won't hold it against Rowboat that he forcibly bit her or threatened to whip her. Just shows how sjm really had to scrape the pot to butcher Kale's character.

back when i was a fan of the books, a friend of mine read q0s before i did and told me that sj///m treats Chaol horribly but she was okay with it bc she liked rowboat (she doesn’t now, and is in fact no longer a fan of sj///m), and so i went into the book already angry and became even angrier when i saw how Chaol was treated. he’s in no way perfect, but the butchering of his character was so fucking horrible, especially bc it felt so goddamn forced (like you mention). i just find it rather hilarious that sj///m clearly realized she’d missed an opportunity to make yet another hypermasculine male character and thus had to backtrack on her fuckery, the way she did with Nesta. 

[gabilina]

i think everyone who’s been in fandom long enough has that character or short list of characters that they’d defend to the ends of the earth. for me, chaol westfall is one of them. it’s been like 5, 6 years at this point and i’m still astounded that sj/m would use him the way she did. i mean, i really shouldn’t be, considering the way she used nehemia, sorscha, nesryn, and yrene—as whitey’s best friend and ship fodder for white men before they either died or fucked off into the ether of narrative irrelevance.

but really, the lack of respect sj/m had for chaol after c0m, and ESPECIALLY after he started using a wheelchair, is disgusting. on a basic authorial level, it’s so unprofessional and amateur of sj/m to just shove aside a MAIN character because she decides she likes rowan better. if she really hated him that much, she could have written him out of the books organically or given him character development rather than weave in her hatred for her own character so obviously into the story. it’s revolting how easy she made it for the fandom to openly shit on him and his entire arc, and how comfortable the fandom has been with wishing for the death, humiliation, and/or healing of a disabled and queer-coded man for years. and knowing the fandom, if lucien hadn’t been retconned into a moc, they’d do the same thing for him if it didn’t make them look racist (regardless of the fact that lucien too is disabled). i’ve literally never seen so much disrespect from a creator for their own characters aside from the writers of game of thrones. sj/m’s lack of authorial integrity not only damages her characters and stories, but it also shows a complete disregard for fans who were rooting for those characters. she endorses the fandom hatred and sidelining of these characters and thus their fans with her writing.

[gabilina]

Hi! I'm new to Tumblr but I read the Throne of Glass books on the recommendation of a friend who said they were great. I somehow managed to finish the series but I didn't get what the hype was about? Like I didn't feel any emotions for any of the characters (except maybe Chaol, Dorian, Manon and her Thirteen). And I just feel so angry and I'd really like to rant about this territorial Fae thing because what the hell is that!? I never want a relationship like that.

Welcome to the blue hell. The more time passes, the more I genuinely wonder how SJ/M got so popular in the first place. Her main thing is “conventionally white girls date a lot of white guys in a fake medieval European world and there’s magic and action scenes sometimes.” Like I guess the main thing that allowed her to become one of the most popular YA authors is timing and frequent content. She was lucky to debut just as the fantasy trend was picking back up and she went through a long phase of pumping out 400,000 words a year for T0G and AC0TAR. The territorial fae were her downfall but for some reason she’s really interested in repeatedly writing bland 500something-year-old men being horny over somewhat less bland teenage girls? The relationships aren’t appealing, the worldbuilding is nonsensical, the character development is all over the place. So the only thing that sets her apart is her sex scenes and ability to word vomit consistently.

[gabilina]

Hello :) I wanted to ask you something. What are your thoughts about Aedion as a character? I've seen you talk about Chaol and Rowan a lot, but you never mention Aedion (Unless of course, I missed something) I always thought he was one of the more underrated characters in TOG personally.

Eh, I don’t think about him much. I never had strong positive feelings about him like I did D0rian and Kale and L/ucien, but I never had strong negative feelings about him like I did R0wan and the I/llyrians. When his POV was introduced in H0F, I was more interested in every other POV (Kale, D0rian, Man0n, Celery). His internal conflict from what I recall was basically “I need to find and pledge to Alien” and I’d taken a break between reading C0M and H0F so I didn’t even know who he was supposed to be for much of the novel. He was the most interesting in Q0S, imo, but he’s never inspired intrigue or ire in me and looking back on the series as a whole I don’t remember much of what he did. I think @spaceshipkat is a bigger fan though! For me, the most underrated characters in T0G are A/sterin and S0rscha. I think other characters had the potential to be really good, like E/lide and Lisandra, but SJ/M only used them for lazy romances and Alien worship.

[gabilina]

you know what i think kids/teen books do 'fantasy romance/fantasy books' way better than any of the adult fantasy books booktok raves about. i try and read some of them and 90 percent of the time its just smut and abusive relationships disguised as 'dark romance'. then i read books like Keeper Of The Lost Cities, The School for Good and Evil, Percy Jackson, Land of Stories, the Nevermoor series, that kind of thing, and they are all actually so amazing because they have fleshed out characters with flaws and an engaging plotline instead of just badly written romance. and when they do have romance it's well written and about the people rather than the tropes.

[gabilina]

FRIENDLY REMINDER

in a few years acotar and tog will be remembered as twilight 2.0

[gabilina]

if sarah j mess actually stopped changing her plot to put characters (who have nothing in common) together, and actually stick to what she planned, maybe her books could’ve been way better

[gabilina]

The fact that Rhysand never apologizes for anything he ever does in the text is infuriating and indicative of the preferential treatment Maas gives to her male love interests. She could NEVER have her beloved Rhysand debase himself by reflecting on his actions and making an effort to mend his relationships with others because she’d rather just give him a convenient excuse to absolve him. Having him apologize would be an admission of wrongdoing, and in her eyes Rhysand can do no wrong.

It makes Rhysand incredibly unattractive in my view, he seems incapable of humility and self-reflection to the point that he’ll so casually dismiss the pain and distress of other characters for “the greater good” as if that makes his actions any less harmful. Meanwhile, Maas will GLADLY take any opportunity to make Nesta grovel on her knees for forgiveness and indulge her obsession with “humbling” her to the point of absurdity.

He never even apologized to Feyre for what he inflicted on her UTM. Having good intentions doesn’t magically absolve you of all your crimes and negate their harmful consequences.

[gabilina]

"the inner circle is a wonderful found family" kaz brekker and matthias helvar have a healthier relationship with each other than that mess, and matthias is genuinely half convinced kaz is a literal demon

[gabilina]

Amren here is giving me Duke Perrington vibes

She is not even saying he could make pyrthian a better place. She is saying no one will stand against him with that sort of power.

[gabilina]

So can we all agree SJ/Mess is going to rip off the hunger games to make alien a “victim” and have her “rise from the ashes” like the phoenix that somehow gets tattooed on her back. she is going to make everything about alien and possibly rip off more pieces of stories and maybe side line a LGBTQ character just to support the hetero ships and characters

[gabilina]

"God-killer. That’s what she was. A god-killer. She didn’t regret it. Not one bit" -Aelin. WEEEELL I guess Aelin is wonder woman now as well 🤷🏽

she’s killing a god? i’m so confused bc in another spoiler she declared herself a god, and yet now she’s killing gods. is it too much to ask she just implode from the sheer volume of contradictions? @runes-and-relics we need to make this happen.