u/Jifflle

This subreddit is no stranger to Tamlin haters. It’s a heavily advertised stance to have on Tamlin in the fandom in general. In Feyre’s perspective during the second book, the story works as a larger campaign to suspend the reader’s disbelief into thinking Feyre would genuinely leave Tamlin for Rhysand.

The transition works as such: Tamlin locks Feyre in the house, Feyre leaves Tamlin for Rhysand, Tamlin loses Feyre, Tamlin redeems himself to the audience by being vital to the war victory, Tamlin and Feyre do not get back together but they each wish each other to be happy on their own paths. Tamlin’s story is not resolved but the chapter of his life with Feyre is over. The equation is rather simple. Tamlin messes up, Tamlin faces consequences, Tamlin apologizes and goes to action, closure is had, Tamlin moves on. So why isn’t the fandom satisfied? Why must Tamlin continue to suffer?

I believe that most of the ACOTAR fandom suffers from an empathy block and they default to the Just-World Fallacy. The Just-World Fallacy is the widespread assumption that the world is objectively fair; good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people. But Tamlin is a contradiction to this idea. Tamlin is a severely traumatized character. A man suffering from paternal and fraternal childhood abuse. Tamlin also suffers from the inherent guilt of sending his men to die during Amarantha’s curse, unintentionally revealing Rhysand’s mother and sister’s location, and being a bystander to Feyre’s abuse under the mountain. Tamlin suffers mental abuse under Amarantha’s torment as well. Tamlin’s trauma is not caused because he is a bad person. It just happens to him. He is a person having bad things happen to him. Tamlin neglects Feyre’s own trauma as a trauma response itself. Tamlin is lashing out because of bad things that happened to him. This directly contradicts the just-world fallacy.

So what do people do in response to this contradiction? Instead of reshaping the just-world fallacy like some people would, they will instead strip Tamlin of his victim status. The idea of a victim unintentionally causing pain on another person is absurd, thus Tamlin cannot be both, he can only be an abuser himself. Any feelings of sympathy that may have been held for Tamlin are erased. In the mind of someone who has done this, the call for justice against Tamlin no longer feels like senseless malice, but right.

“Justice” for Tamlin would realistically be the loss of his relationship with Feyre. Tamlin narratively does get worse than that. His home is destroyed and he is consistently verbally berated by the IC. Tamlin is not a perfect victim and so the sympathy well has all but evaporated. Even more than that, because Tamlin is a victim, his neglect of Feyre is seen as an even more egregious betrayal than if Tamlin was just a bad person without trauma. Thus the hate for Tamlin becomes a mob mentality. It is seen as a badge of honor to so valiantly stand up and mock Tamlin for what he did and continue to wish that he suffer because of it.

Funnily enough we see this manifest in Rhysand himself. When he confronts Tamlin and verbally berates him after Tamlin saved his life, Rhysand is speaking on behalf of the audience, justifying the feeling of righteousness when Tamlin is kicked down. Suddenly it becomes acceptable to abuse the abused because you only think of them as an abuser.

This is where I think the cruelty stems from. We will see theories about Amarantha being Tamlin’s true mate, Tamlin getting mated to a horrible person or a child to make him look bad, Tamlin dying and someone taking over the spring court… I could go on. People receive a rush of nearly sadistic pleasure in the idea of this character suffering because it makes THEM feel like a better person, a defender of the weak and injured.

It won’t ever be enough for them, and any good that comes to Tamlin’s life will be perceived as an abusive man getting a reward. It is such a warped violent perception of a story that it defies the actual story that the author is trying to tell with the character. How can we interact in a fandom with people so fundamentally empathetically numb? I don’t know.

1. The spring court being repaired WITHOUT THE NIGHT COURT DOING IT.

I am still monumentally pissed by the events of ACOWAR. I understood Feyre being angry and vindictive (aren’t we all about recent messy break ups?) and I could’ve understood her just being generally rude to Tamlin. HOWEVER. Destroying the spring court and making the Hybern attacks 10x worse because of how badly she weakened it was awful. It was a fucking war crime. Tamlin and Tarquin both bring up the fact that because of what she did she killed innocent civilians she claimed she wanted to protect. This is exactly why I want to see Tamlin heal and work to get his court back together. I think he could. And I don’t know if it would be a self healing arc or a friend helping him but I want to see it get done. I think I’d drop the series forever if SJM just has Tamlin spiral into depression and the court dissolve with him. I don’t want Feyre and Rhys to rebuild the court. I don’t even want the IC to help at all.

2. Reparations!!!!

And you know what? On the note of the summer and spring court being devastated BECAUSE OF WHAT FEYRE DID: Get Tamlin some diplomat pants and have him go over to the Summer court. Because both the spring and the summer court deserve reparations for the damage the NC did to them both. I don’t buy for a second that Tarquin forgave Feyre and Rhysand for the book betrayal or the domino effect that damaged his ALREADY weak court. I’d love to see Tamlin and Tarquin actually become friends. Not only are they border buddies but they’ve both been done filthy by the NC. Those two need to write up a reparations petition ASAP. Clearly the rich NC can afford it from the lavish lifestyle the IC lives.

3. Tamlin and Lucien talking.

I think we all know that the next book will be very Lucien centered which makes sense. I’m really hoping Tamlin and Lucien talk again. I don’t expect them to be friends again at all. I just want them both to have closure. I think it’s important they have a conversation about all that happened. I especially want Tamlin to apologize to Lucien and not get kicked in the face for apologizing.

4. Tamlin Bonus Chapters

I’m gonna be so real I have zero hope that Tamlin will get a feature book. I don’t think SJM has the balls to do it. People would be pissed about it. But I do hope we eventually get a bonus chapter in Tam’s POV where he isn’t just suffering. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASEEE IM ON MY KNEES

That’s all I can think of for now. I’d love to hear your wants for the next few books. I’m hoping SJM at least gives our boy a semblance of a happy ending.

I’ve been doing my annual rewatch of the Total Drama series and I just finished Search and Do Not Destroy. I always did find it a little ridiculous that Heather gets away with so many gambles S1 so I thought about how I’d rewrite S1 to make Heather’s longevity in the competition more believable. Thus I present: Tweaking Every Episode Heather Should’ve Been Voted Off In

Not so Famous: While the votes in Not so Famous logistically make sense when we consider Cody possibly voting for Trent out of jealousy, Heather was safe by a VERY slim margin. (It’s also debatable that Owen would’ve voted for Justin even for cake so…) What I would change in this episode to make Justin’s elimination more believable is to have Heather actually scheme. I’d change Justin’s talent from the weird water show to bad poetry. I could imagine Justin reading meaningless poetry while posing and being attractive. Right before his performance Heather would switch out his poetry book for Gwen’s diary. When he opens it and begins reading the SG’s would assume he stole it and was being a bully. Heather’s framing of Justin would cause the team to fully vote for him without her taking a huge gamble. There could be a moment of suspicion where Gwen or Leshawna finds Justin’s poetry book hidden away in the girls cabin.

Paintball Deer Hunter: Keep everything the same BUT have Chris explain that Cody is required to leave for medical purposes. It’d somewhat mimic the Ridonculous Race elimination of the Best Friends when Devin is sent home due to medical emergency. Heather would also be just seen as a general bitch by her teammates rather than the bitch that read Gwen’s diary. Thus the confrontation with Beth would still make sense. Leshawna shooting Heather as well would make sense since she’s probably just a nuisance to Leshawna in general at this point.

If You Can’t Take the Heat: This is another episode where it logistically makes sense why Beth was voted off but it’s still a little hard to believe Heather skirted by. I’d keep the episode relatively the same but I’d have Beth be more involved with the SG’s loss. Since Beth is generally a bit clumsy and would be preoccupied with arguing with Heather, I’d have her majorly mess up the prepping of their dishes. Beth would be put in charge of watching the oven and taking food out of it. When the team is locking Heather in the fridge Beth forgets about the ribs and they burn up. This way Owen doesn’t eat them randomly and Beth is at fault for destroying a dish as well as the curse situation. It’d still show that Heather was considered to be voted off but the team sees Beth as a liability along with the curse situation.

Search and Do Not Destroy: This is the major one that needs to be rewritten. Heather would still want to interfere in Gwen’s relationship with Trent as she doesn’t want other alliances on the island. Instead of all the players opening their treasure chests at the end of the episode I’d have Chris establish that they can open their chests right after they retrieve their key. Heather gets her key and goes to unlock her chest. She realizes she got the invincibility card and decides that she has a prime opportunity to interfere with Gwent’s relationship. She does her kissing scheme WITH the knowledge she has invincibility. During the campfire ceremony almost everyone does vote for Heather but she shows her invincibility card at the ceremony. Thus Trent is voted off because Heather votes didn’t count. This way it’d make sense why Heather felt comfortable doing something so drastic.

That’s Off the Chain!: We all know that Lindsay’s elimination is sort of bullshit. It’s on a technicality that was just there to save Heather. At the end of the biking challenge I’d let Chris give the remaining campers an option on what they want to do next. They can either: A. Have a race to the end of the course. Whoever wins gets invincibility and then they move onto a campfire ceremony. OR B. They race to the end of the course and whoever wins gets a prize as well as invincibility (Think how Leshawna won the camper in No Pain, No Game. It’d be a similar situation). BUT if they choose option B the person who comes in last during the race immediately gets kicked off. He takes a vote of the campers who can participate in the race. Since they’re greedy teenagers they obviously vote to do the prize option. During the race Heather speeds ahead and Lindsay gets her bike stuck in the piranha pool. Duncan and Owen race ahead and Lindsay comes in last. Lindsay asks Heather if she’d give her the immunity win and Heather says no. This leads to their falling out and a more realistic way to eliminate Lindsay.

Hook, Line, and Screamer!: TDI is often a bit confusing in terms of campers being technically eliminated instead of being voted out. To remedy this I’d have Chris establish from the beginning of the merger that sometimes challenges will end with a campfire ceremony and sometimes challenges will be based on performance. Whoever performs the worst in a challenge gets eliminated by default. Chris explains that this makes their performances in the challenge more important because they don’t know if eliminations will be based on popularity or skill every other challenge. This would shift the horror movie challenge into a performance based challenge. The goal of it would be to see who can survive the longest against Killer Chef after being confronted by him. Since DJ reacts the way he does in the episode he gets eliminated. This makes Heather safe that episode due to the nature of the challenge.

Wawanakwa Gone Wild: Similar to the horror challenge we’d change this challenge into a performance based one as well. During Heather’s scheme with Duncan to attract a bear, Heather does manage to get one to chase after her. She gets tranquilized by Izzy and collapses right before she gets to the cage. The bear stumbles into the cage last minute and Heather finishes second to last because of this. Izzy is thus the only person without an animal in the cage and gets eliminated.

Trial by Tri-Armed Triathlon: It’s kind of stupid when the campers randomly decide to vote off someone because they’re popular instead of voting off the obvious choice of Heather. I’d remedy this by simply just… having Owen and Heather win the challenge. Heather wouldn’t antagonize Owen about Izzy and they’d finish the stacking challenge first due to Heather’s memory of the other campers and Owen being sociable enough to remember when each camper went. Because Heather isn’t available to vote off the rest of the campers would vote off Geoff as the most popular camper.

Haute Camp-ture: Leshawna’s elimination is pure bullshit and we all know it. Instead of Chris asking the losers who they want to join them in the Playa Des Losers it’d be a competition. Chris would devise some little mini game where one loser from the Playa could represent their wanted winner. They’d compete in a challenge and whoever came in last would thus have their repped camper sent to Playa Des Losers. During the challenge Izzy volunteers for Heather when no one else will because she “thinks a challenge would be fun.” Harold obviously reps for Leshawna. The challenge turns out to be a physical race around the Playa where they’ll have to retrieve a flag with their favorite campers face on it. They then have to race back with the flag to the hot tub. During the race Harold annoys the shit out of Courtney (who’s repping for Duncan obviously) by monologuing about winning for love. She tackles him and they get in an altercation. While they’re fighting Courtney overhears Gwen, Owen, and Heather’s reps making it back to the hot tub. In a panic she stops fighting Harold and runs to the hot tub. Since she’s faster than Harold she makes it back first. Thus Leshawna is eliminated.

In Conclusion:
While these aren’t PERFECT ways to fix Heather’s plot armor I think they’re serviceable in a way. It’s also just fun to think about how I would write a season or tweak it. I’d love to hear how you all would tweak seasons as well. If you read this whole ramble I do thank you.