#tfota rant

[viivdle]

saw something on my feed and i have to break my silence

KEEP MY GIRL'S NAME WREN OUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH!!!!!!!!

"she knew how horrible the bridle was and used it on oak, she needs to be punished" mkay so you just chose to ignore the plot.

you make jokes about jude punishing cardan because she deserves to go psycho for what everyone did to her.. then someone who's not your fav does it and you start tweaking??

wren is the first truly morally gray tfota character in that sense. i love it.

her entire life was so complex from the start, of course she turned out the way she did. from the difference in her and her family in childhood to being snatched by the court of teeth. from the age she could form thoughts, she was traumatized. she was HOMELESS and preferred it to her "home" don't you guys get that? she is horrified and fragile and ALONE. then the ONLY person she trusted comes back into her life just to use her - of course she uses the fucking bridle. she deserves to have a fucking psychotic breakdown. it's the way she was raised.

when jude and cardan are toxic because of the trauma they can't shed, you're so sorry for them. when wren is toxic because of the trauma she endured, you call her the very thing she is afraid of being - a monster.

the favoritism is insane and you guys are blind if you don't see it.

[cromulentreader]

I wish the deleted ending for TQoN was the real ending and not what we got in the mortal world.

[yureichi]

I was scrolling through Pinterest when I came across a post about QON chapter 21 and some comments were crazy with purity obsession. There’s people out there who really think that having sex ruins a character. The series is YA, so, not explicit, but the sexually liberated, partying naked, several lovers, staring-at-your-crush-while-kissing-other-people culture of the Folk is often brought up. So I don’t see why people trouble themselves reading the books if the subject bothers them so much.

Someone really said that Jude and Cardan’s first time was degrading and out of character for Jude - I’m sorry, what?? How is a young married couple having sex degrading? Jude had the hots for Cardan from the get go, even in TCP (even though back then she was too busy hating his attitude and his bullshit to realise and that ended up severally repressing and undermining her physical attraction to him), the moment she kissed him and enjoyed it a little too much she was DOOMED. She was raging and furious while simultaneously imagining his mouth on her in the Queen of Mirth scene. She gave in into him in the very first (actual, physical) move he made on her, dude kissed her and their clothes were gone, consequences be damned. They spent months apart, were missing each other badly and were horny. So, yeah, them sleeping together was, in fact, very in character and expected. Jude provoking him with his fantasies and losing her virginity on top was on point with the girl she is and I wouldn’t expect anything less from her lol.

People really need to stop purifying fictional characters so they can fit into their niche needs and they really really need to stop demonizing sex. It’s how you ended up in the world in the first place. It’s normal. Most people do it. If you don’t feel up to it, there’s no need to do it or consume media where it’s portrayed in a nice and positive way. Go find a shape in the clouds before shaming people (both real and fictional) for normal human (and faerie, of course) behaviour.

[starrynightsxo]

"jude and cardan had a toxic relationsh-"

no actually, they did not. there were reasons for everything that happened and just because everyone is so quick to judge things these days doesn't mean it needs to happen to them. whilst in the first book there was some initial behaviours that do support the claim, there were reasons behind them and also this is how enemies to lovers works !! they BECOME lovers. there is such a thing called a redemption arc?? not to mention we get an apology from cardan for everything he has done. toxicity is not what was in their relationship - it was ferocity. The ferocity of their love.

So let's all please stop labelling everything to ever exist toxic and focus on the people who actually need support from their toxic partners / relationships

EDIT: I would just like to clarify that I meant all this for when jude and cardan were in an actual romantic relationship together! This is by no means condoning what happened at the beginning of the books as that was most definitely wrong. I DO NOT condone any form of toxic relationship. I was trying to point out that once they were in an actual romantic relationship then they were NOT toxic and this is what some people argue they were. Apologies for any misconceptions!

[dragons-library]

The Queen of Nothing rants:

Bro Locke dying off page is just so funny and perfect… my guy really believed he was the main character and died on a footnote 😭 lmaoooo is what he deserved.

Taryn… still pissed at you but killing Locke does gain you some (many) points lol

Jude’s nightmare 😬 girl has issues… so real 🤪🎀

Oak has my entire heart 😪🩷

And back to elfhame we gooooo

[looking4thatqueersubtext]

im so fucking sick of seeing jude depicted as a thin ass woman like NO.

it's stated multiple times through out the books that not only is she muscular because of all her swordfighting training but she also doesn't have that thin frame and that is exactly what sets her apart from the fae (and part of what makes her beautiful to cardan like hellooooo?). she has curves and muscle and scars. all of that is so so so important to her character.

[mycovenofwitches]

do you ever wake up and think about the way cardan wrote letters to jude revealing his deepest emotions and she never got the chance to read them?

do you???

do you?????

because i do.

all the time-

[cardanapologist]

saw a tiktok that was the “you belong with me” trend and they had oak under the happy cute “you belong with me 🫶🏽🤭” slide which is wild because this dude blacks out when killing people and would do so when defending wren, i HIGHLY and STRONGLY and FOREALSIES believe he would be a “YOU BELONG WITH ME 👿” dude. cardan can stay on that side too but oak has to join him

[daddycardan]

Holly said she doesn’t think Jude is as pretty as a faerie but the books mentions faeries find her very beautiful. Like they mention her beauty more often than any of Holly black’s heroines. Than it got to me, Jude’s beauty could be different from the faeries. Like she’s extremely beautiful in a human way but not beautiful in the same way as them. Because someone said Holly once said in 2019 Jude was unnaturally pretty for a mortal and unusually attractive. And the books always have faeries mention their beauty. What do you think is the case?

It's pretty clear that Jude is very different from the faeries. It's hard to gauge what exactly she looks like & therefore how pretty she is, because Jude can be an unreliable narrator sometimes (like when it comes to interpreting Cardan, she often gets it wrong, so I wouldn't be surprised if she underplayed her own looks, too). She doesn't often mention her physical appearance and when she does, it's not overly positive, which indicates that she either doesn't consider herself pretty, or doesn't attribute much importance to it.

NOW, that doesn't mean she isn't pretty. I actually think that she's really fucking attractive. From the story, we know that faeries are tall and slender and aren't well endowed with curves. We also know that Jude (& Taryn) are on the curvier side, especially when it comes to their breasts. Jude is also a very physically active person, so she's got muscle mass. As for her face, it's safe to assume that it's pretty; remember the incident at the mall where some emo dude tried hitting on her? In human standards, she is definitely attractive.

Jude is a different kind of pretty compared to the standard faerie beauty ideal, but I think the fey actually appreciate that. It seems they are fascinated and allured by Jude and Taryn. (Edir wrote love songs for Taryn while admiring her from a distance.)

There's also an element of the fey being surprised with themselves for finding them attractive (Cardan spiraled into an existential crisis over his crush), which I think nicely demonstrates that humans and fey are actually more similar as a species than the faeries would like to admit. Like, this is getting a bit off-topic, but the fact there's this organic mutual attraction between them and that the two species can procreate, really shows that they are as closely related as species can get. Not even horses & donkeys can produce fertile offspring, yet faeries and humans can.

But to answer your question, yes, I think Jude is very attractive, and both humans and faeries know it!

[cromulentreader]

With every re-read of TFoTA, I like Madoc less and less.

[discountsoysauce]

Ok I'd like to preface this with the fact that fanfic writers owe their readers nothing, they're writing out of their free time and giving us their stories for free at the expense of their time and effort and people can interpret characters however they want in their own writing.

Having said that, I am going to rant a bit about Taryn's characterization in some fics ive been reading (not naming or giving any examples from said fics, its just a general rant. In a lot of cases i still like and read said fics and will never be rude to the authors or offer unwarranted advice). If you dont want to see that, dont click read more.

the fundamental misunderstanding of Taryn and Locke's dynamic kills me a little sometimes. Especially in modern/human aus and especially with people who very obviously hate Taryn as a character and haven't tried to understand her motivations nearly as much as they've tried to understand Jude's.

Taryn did not endure the humiliation of both herself and Jude just because she was in love. She did love Locke to an extent, but she stuck by him because he offered two things she did not have in elphame: power and a place in Elphame.

Throwing them into the modern day where they're all human and on equal standing would completely change the dynamic unless there was something else Taryn could gain by putting up with Locke's bullshit, especially if the amount of cruelty and manipulation stays the exact same.

Okay rant over sorry. If you write Taryn like this I don't hate you or anything lol it's just something I noticed. There's also probably ways to do it well and make it make sense.

[beezpajamas]

People have got to stop acting like Cardan being so in love with Jude takes away from his strong character

[starrynightsxo]

I keep seeing snippets of the prisoner's throne (which I am yet to read) and one of the snippets is cardan saying liar "fondly" and I just want holly black to put me out of my misery and let me bloody perish.

[dragons-library]

The cruel prince rants:

Wait wait. So Cardan has something with Nicasia or had??

And Nicasia chose Locke and Locke chose Jude??

Sounds like a little bit of bullshit 🤨 what’s going on????

I don’t trust none of them

[duchessvultjag]

what if jude just straight up can't have kids because thats not a farfetched side effect of poisoning yourself every day for months and then being stabbed in the abdomen

[fantasyfangirling4ever]

Me, checking my notifications to see who is following me like a swarm of baby ducks after imprinting: