u/jessssvesco

Ok I never liked Tamlin even on the first read, but his character and their love story was such a classic trope like fall in love with your mean and scary captor that I just thought ok it’s one of these let me try to enjoy it. But I still couldn’t figure out like what their connection was based on, what they liked about each other.

Anyways I’m currently rereading the first book and the reasons to hate tamlin are so clear even before UTM!! Their first intimate interaction was him violently biting her neck hard enough to bruise while she struggled to push him off and had genuine fear. Before and after that he actually orders her around like a brute and even goes so far as to say “never disobey me again”. Literally WTF!!! Rhys would neverrr even make a command, Tamlin never treated her like an equal.

It only gets worse from there. Their second intimate encounter is him coercing her to let him kiss her in order to show her the beauty of their surroundings. Really, you had to trick and coerce her into a kiss?! And she again fights back and just kisses his hand.

Their actual first kiss on the mouth, the third encounter, is while she is literally out of her mind drunk on faerie wine so it was not consensual!!! You cannot give consent when piss drunk. And this is not at all comparable to Rhys there was no duress or need to have their first kiss while she was drunk. I admit Rhys and her first kiss was not consensual either but it was to save her life and he regrets it! Tamlin never expresses regret over their first kiss being while she was falling over drunk.

Tamlin also has SUCH a temper which we obvi see in books 2 and 3 but even in book 1 his claws are constantly popping out against his will, at one point he even causes his own face to bleed from them 🤮 let alone denting the table like how did Feyre ever feel safe around him!!

Literally Tamlin is everything I would hate in a man and Rhys is the polar opposite everything I’d wish they could be (but most men never will). Her “love” for Tamlin is classic Stockholm syndrome, loving her abuser/captor who’s literally kidnapped her and holding her against her will, and constantly ordering her around and tricking her in to kissing him… and his motives aren’t even because they were naturally falling in love but because tricking her into saying i love you would break his curse. Ugh all of it is just SO GROSS and I’m proud of myself for not feeling it even on first read but also SJM was a genius for tricking us like that but making it so obvious (yet subtle) that he’s a bad guy from the start lol.

I won’t even get started on how he ignores her and won’t even make contact UTM and makes ZERO effort to save her obvi when he had the chance too like remember he could shapeshift and turn Andras into a wolf… why not turn her into a small animal or insect (maybe even turn himself) and run out of there!!! Horrible that again all he wanted was physical from her. The only part inconsistent is that in later books he seems to still want/love her yet I guess it was more about power/owning her like property/using her body still. Even MAF he just ignores her while she throws up, has nightmares, withers away losing all this weight but of course he still uses her for sex throughout all of that 🤮

I saw a post about how someone got the books removed from their library by accident because they informed the library that the books weren’t suitable for YA.

I’m so confused… why aren’t these books suitable for young adults? In most context young adults mean 18+, though from my Google search it seems in publishing it rather refers to teens… I still don’t understand the issue?

We read Handmaid’s Tale in grade 9 and my (hot) English teacher read the dystopian 3-way sex scene aloud to the class - I was 14 and some were 13.

(TRIGGER warning) We read much more traumatic but important things in younger grades - in grade 7 our required start of year reading was Elie Wiesel’s “Night” with extremely descriptive firsthand accounts of the concentration camps during the Holocaust, people being burned alive etc. We were 11/12 years old and I don’t regret it at all - that book opened my eyes and for essentially my whole life I’ve had a better understanding of what happened during the Holocaust.

On a much lighter note, I watched Gossip Girl and other movies with explicit sex scenes (like “Good Luck Chuck) at 12 years old.

Basically I’m trying to understand, why are we sheltering kids or even further trying to police what stranger’s kids consume?? Shouldn’t that be up to the parents, to decide what the kid can handle and how mature they are? Really, most kids are looking up p*rn in their teenage years and perhaps it would be healthy for them to read about deep, romantic, loving relationships in ACOTAR and what safe, consensual sex looks like.

I also don’t get the fuss about the sex scenes in general - other than SF they are all very vanilla and there’s barely 1-3 scenes spread out across like 600 pages!

Anyways wanted to share because I’m interested in other people’s POV on this. Sorry if this isn’t purely IC related - I don’t engage in the main sub as I find people are rude and toxic there!