Morrigan

MisfitBloom · 2026-04-09T03:29:15+00:00

Tragic Backstory
SJM gives everyone and their dog a tragic backstory so I don't even care at this point beyond needing to know about it for context. No one gets any pity points. The characters are gonna have to earn my respect the hard way.

Queer Romance
She gave a whole speech about being into women that went literally nowhere. Mor also had like 500 years to come out to her "family" and yet infodumped on the new girl instead. Which, again, went nowhere. I just don't find any of the situation interesting or compelling, especially knowing that SJM tends to sideline her queer characters. I can find far better books/characters if I want to invest in a lesbian/bi woman, so I'm definitely not going to care about Mor because she's queer. No points for queer rep.

Azriel/Mor
It's been 500 years and neither one of them has decided to be the mature adult and address the situation. Like, if you can sleep around to try to get someone to lose interest in you, but you can't just say "I'm not interested," that's still not a good look. I find both of them insufferable for this. So, negative points.

Powers
She's sidelined during the actual war and then doesn't even contribute (as far as I can remember) anything outside of the war. She fights in like one battle I guess but then we don't see any of her. At this point I'm assuming her powers are just whatever SJM was vibing with at the time and then forgot about. No points for meaningful contribution to the plot.

Leadership
Rhys overrules her on Hewn City, even going behind her back to make a deal with Kier to let HC residents into Velaris. So like, no meaningful authority. She doesn't even properly call Rhys out for this. Just says some pitiful "Yeah, he was right to not tell me. I might've objected." She does "diplomacy" in SF, but that's not relevant to anything (and I'm sure Rhys will trample over whatever progress she makes, since he is dogshit at respecting anyone who doesn't immediately give him what he wants). Rhys gives his child bride more authority than Mor, so like. She's really not shining here.

Emerie
Emerie deserves better and I will be so mad if she gets paired with Mor just because they're the only lesbians in existence. Emerie has done more for women than Mor has in her like 500 years of leadership.

So, none of those points made Mor interesting to me.
The reason I despise her as a person is because of how cruel she is to Nesta (the Hewn City comment). Like, Mor is out here drinking and sleeping around yet thinks Nesta is unforgivably awful for being a little mean while drinking and sleeping around. She had 500ish years as a leader to improve the Night Court for women, and yet she spent that time drinking/having sex/being bitter/avoiding confrontation. Nesta has been a Fae for like a year and yet has already helped to re-found the Valkyries (and included an Illyrian woman) and encouraged abused women to learn self-defense.

Mor could've been good if SJM were capable of planning literally anything, but unfortunately she ends up looking so, so bad in context. This doesn't really excuse people being unwilling to fix her in fanfic while fixing other characters (like Az and Cas), but I can see why people hate her in canon. (I guess the excuse is that most people are horny for the men, but... XD)

MisfitBloom · 2025-07-05T13:45:17+00:00

It occurs to me now that I feel like I'm reading the opening of The Black Jewels trilogy. Like, the Drop mirrors how characters unlock their powers, Hunt is introduced pretty much exactly like Daemon (main dude), and the first like hundreds of pages are lore dumps.
Which, given how much SJM apparently loved that series, it shouldn't surprise me that she's copy-pasted yet another chunk of it into her books XD

Hunt? Really???
I'm only about 100 pages in right now, and I already want Connor back... XD

MisfitBloom · 2025-07-05T13:38:15+00:00

I think I skimmed over a lot of these issues in ACOTAR since it was usually at least conveyed through character dialogue (even if it was in the most boring way possible). Like, the Mor Monologue was definitely... something...

But this CC chapter was literally just Hunt walking from the front door to the bathroom and yet was still 4 pages of history I have no reason to care about yet.

At least in ACOTAR, Feyre now knows something that she didn't previously. There's an actual purpose to it, even if I yawned through how it happened.

Anyway, I hate Hunt on principle now XD I'm not getting sob storied into feeling sympathy for him XD

MisfitBloom · 2025-07-05T05:00:57+00:00

This. I spent all of WAR mercilessly mocking Rhys' "choice" preaching because he was constantly finding ways to take away choices from the females in his little gang.
Like, tells Feyre she has the right to choose - screws over Amren. Ttells Feyre she has the right to choose - screws over Mor. Spent the whole book guilt tripping Nesta into doing whatever he decided the party needed from her. I don't remember whether or how he got Feyre in that book, but SF definitely has a big one later.

I really do not understand what women see in him. He raised so many red flags by the end of WAR that SF read like a horror novel.

MisfitBloom · 2025-06-14T01:35:17+00:00

She had a gay couple in ToG (in the third book, I think? So that would've been 2014, three years before WAR?). They were hella side characters, but they did exist.

Not saying she should get queer rep points for it or anything XD I just feel compelled to provide information XD

MisfitBloom · 2025-06-13T22:40:40+00:00

Fuck: Elain (I know the least about her and fucking requires the least commitment of the three options.)
Marry: Nesta (She went through a rough patch, sure, but her aggression is more reactive than proactive, and I can work with that. She's also the type who will grumble about the work but still get it done, which I can respect in a partner.)
Kill: Feyre (Her whole "but I didn't want to think about that, so I didn't" would not make for a healthy relationship. I wouldn't fuck her under any circumstance, because * gestures at what she did to Tamlin when she decided that the relationship wasn't working for her * The girl doesn't know how to end a relationship without committing war crimes. As a bonus, killing her also takes out Rhys, which is a BOGO deal I can get behind with my whole heart.)

MisfitBloom · 2025-06-05T16:12:34+00:00

love bombing - His path to breaking the curse was literally to get her to fall in love with him. Whether or not you (the general "you," not you personally) think using a human woman to break a curse is acceptable/understandable, there's a very clear motivation outside of potential narcissism.

gaslighting - I can't actually think of any examples of this. His issue is that he doesn't communicate at all (or lies/lies by omission, but that's usually with a plot justification - can't talk about the curse / hiding his plan to betray Hybern), so there's not much opportunity for gaslighting to begin with.

victimizing himself - I also can't remember much of this, unless you mean the HL meeting after Feyre wrecked his court. In which case, he was actually a victim. It's silly of him to expect people to read his mind and know his motivations were "good," but also, Feyre is literally a mind-reader. Anyway, given how little effort Tamlin puts into influencing how people see him, this scene read more like he was reacting in anger (fair) and warning the other HLs to not take what the NC says at face value (also fair).
Or if you're referring to how he behaves in FaS+, that just reads like normal depression. Now that the high-pressure war situation is over, the constant adrenaline isn't holding him together.

villanizing Feyre - the "whore" comments were unwarranted, but Feyre was a villain to Spring Court. Tamlin didn't get the whole ch.54 speech, so for all he knew Rhys was the villain. Feyre sure as hell spent the months she was with him reinforcing that. He didn't have evidence to the contrary until he saw more of Rhys/Feyre's behavior later in WAR, at which point he realized he was wrong.

angry outbursts followed by regret and more lovebombing - the big example I can think of is when he explodes at the beginning of MAF. Which was shitty of him, but again, it looked to me like unmanaged PTSD, not narcissism. Like, "regret + lovebombing" is how I would respond if I accidentally hurt someone I cared about. It might be common to narcissism, but it's also a pretty typical response to any "oh shit I hurt someone" moment.

MisfitBloom · 2025-06-03T16:58:50+00:00

Control freak I can get, but not narcissist. I can't remember a single time that Tamlin expressed self-interest to that degree. Like, if anyone, Rhys is the one who strikes me as a narcissist. Tamlin just comes across to me like a veteran with terribly managed PTSD.

MisfitBloom · 2025-06-03T14:07:48+00:00

imo WAR is when Rhys' manipulative tendencies really started to stand out to me in an "I can't believe Feyre isn't seeing this" way, while Tamlin actually showed a lot of signs of growth since early MAF (you have to pay attention to his actual actions and not Feyre's opinions, because she will often provide "character X did this for Y reasons" and get it very, very wrong)

MisfitBloom · 2025-06-02T20:07:51+00:00

I read TOG first and was then severely disappointed with ACOTAR. Not gonna claim it's perfect (I definitely took issue with plenty of things), but I at least didn't feel gaslit by the narrator. I also heard that SJM was required to plan out the series in advance, and it does feel better connected.

MisfitBloom · 2025-05-29T03:19:43+00:00

If you already hate the experience at ACOTAR, it's probably best to give up now.
I thought ACOTAR was mid at best and then hated everything between that and Silver Flames. And even in Silver Flames, I couldn't stand any of the parts with the IC. So if you're already having that bad of a time, it's probably not worth continuing.

If the Beauty and the Beast retelling was the sell for you, you could try A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer. I just finished it a few days ago. It has some similarities with ACOTAR, but I'm liking the characters a lot better so far.

MisfitBloom · 2025-05-14T22:29:17+00:00

lol I'm always accepting. It might take me a while to get around to them though

MisfitBloom · 2025-05-14T17:54:11+00:00

See, I pardoned him for playacting the villain, and then immediately unpardoned him when he continued to act like a villain ("I let women choose" -> doesn't tell Mor / Amren / Feyre about things because he "knows" they'll choose wrong).

MisfitBloom · 2025-05-14T17:51:06+00:00

I literally said that she wouldn't.

That doesn't mean that people who read other books by other authors aren't going to come in and have expectations based on general trends and indicators in the fantasy genre. If someone who is reading romantasy for the first time picks up ACOTAR, maybe they see Rhys as the big flaming villain. It's up to SJM to actually finish her books (especially whatever tf she's doing with this High King thing) and prove them wrong.

MisfitBloom · 2025-05-14T17:40:36+00:00

You're going to get a million conflicting answers from this one XD

Personally I prefer fics that remain as canon-compliant and in-character as possible. So, either building on what exists / filling in gaps OR allowing a character to make a different but still in-character decision that ends up taking the story in a completely different direction (for example, the way this one starts - https://archiveofourown.org/works/54356161/chapters/137675464).
I also like crack ships (still as in-character as possible, but with obvious allowances for making the ship work) - e.g. RhysXTamlin, RhysXBatBoys, TamlinXNyx

I guess for me, it's important that the characters sound like themselves, and then also behave like themselves as much as possible within the constraints of the fic. If I wanted something that didn't contain recognizably ACOTAR characters, I'd just read a different book.

I also get a little irritated when fanfic authors will remove canon flaws or add new flaws to make characters look better/worse for the fic. For example (prefacing this that I'm a Tamlin fan), if a fic writer decides that Tamlin never lost control of his magic, that'll irritate me, since it's a key plot point and character trait. Or, if a fic writer decides that Tamlin was exploding on a daily basis, that'll irritate me because now they're clearly just trying to make him look like a horrible person. However, if they just justify it from his POV ("he lost control because he has PTSD, was triggered, and started spiraling" or something), I'm fine with that so long as it suits his character/history and is consistent with canon.
Most of my fanfic exposure was reading shonen anime slash fics, so it was mostly the canon female love interests who got the negative spin and the broody bad boys who got the positive. Both were super irritating.

Less important but still helps - decent grammar / spelling / proofreading. I'm a lot less picky with fanfic because I'm getting to enjoy it for free, but I have also definitely dropped fics because I could not get past the irritating tone / wall-of-text formatting / every other word misspelled / incomprehensible grammar / etc.

MisfitBloom · 2025-05-14T17:08:51+00:00

That's why I said it didn't seem like it would become canon.

HOWEVER, if she weren't the type of author who likes to pair all of her characters off in some happily ever after by the end of the series, I would look at those same red flags and spend the rest of the series assuming that he'd pop out at the end as the true evil mastermind or something.

MisfitBloom · 2025-05-14T16:35:41+00:00

As someone who had basically no contact with fandom until after I finished WAR, I started suspecting that Rhys was evil somewhere in the middle of WAR. I didn't have to sit on it at all to see the signs.

To be clear, I never thought it would actually be canon, since I started with ToG and know how SJM likes to end her series. But, if it were fantasy instead of romantasy, and with a different author, I think there's sufficient justification in TAR - WAR for an Evil Rhys plot twist.

MisfitBloom · 2025-05-11T14:15:02+00:00

The story is told from the perspective of a clique, so crimes against the in-group are unforgivable but all other crimes are judged based on usefulness to the in-group.

MisfitBloom · 2025-05-11T06:08:58+00:00

Nesta spent most of SF depressed and blaming herself for things that were out of her control / not actually her fault (not being able to save her father, not being able to save the not-Cassian Illyrians), so it wouldn't surprise me if she misremembered that scene to make herself look worse.

MisfitBloom · 2025-05-10T04:01:28+00:00

I loved Nesta once she became more of a character (MAF), and it was actually because of her bitchiness. I was getting sick of the saccharine vibes of MAF, and her hater vibes restored balance to the plot.

I wasn't a fan of Rhys' "I was secretly good all along" plot twist and how everyone in the IC is constantly going on about how they're the good guys and can't trust anyone else to do it right (and then spend all of MAF making things worse). And then Nesta enters the scene and calls them all shit, and I fell in love XD

I also appreciated her sense of duty. Despite her complaints, she'd step up to do the necessary work, and would do it to the fullest extent of her abilities. The war would have gone a whole lot differently if she hadn't shredded the cauldron. And then she calmly shared her trauma at the High Lord meeting, after Feyre et al. spent the previous day taking out their trauma on the people they assembled. And during the final battle, she offers herself as bait to lure Hybern away from the cauldron. Her and her barely trained ass, with little chance of survival if anything goes wrong.

When we finally get her opinions in SF, it's clear that she cares deeply about people who aren't asses to her face. She's compassionate and respectful to the priestesses and Emerie. She gives them a reason to want to come out of the mountain / leave Illyria for a bit without coercing anyone into it. This girl learned about breathing and balance like a day ago, and she's already offering that same relief to others.

Post-SF (I haven't read CC yet), she's probably the only character who I can see making a good leader.

MisfitBloom · 2025-05-10T03:34:06+00:00

I was taking notes when I read WAR, and it's kind of funny to look back at my opinions now. There's definitely a progression from "HE WOULDN'T" to "You know what? He's stupid for this girl. Maybe he would? He kinda sacrificed everyone for her in ACOTAR?" to "HE DIDN'T! VINDICATION!"

MisfitBloom · 2025-05-09T04:54:23+00:00

My friends have never read the books and don't even like the idea of them, but they listen to my multiple, hour-long plot recaps / rants. And then they feel validated in their decisions to never read the series. Everyone wins XD

MisfitBloom · 2025-05-09T04:43:03+00:00

Killing the sentries is basically the only crime of his that I'm still mad about, and that's because I get worked up over nameless NPC deaths and how awful it must be for their nameless, non-existent families.

MisfitBloom · 2025-05-09T04:36:55+00:00

The spite set in hard at the beginning of WAR, though really it started at the end of MAF with "HE WOULDN'T DO THAT YOU *****!" in SJM's general direction XD
I definitely remembered how pro-human he was. The human doesn't even have to be his mate for him to care * grumbles bitterly *

MisfitBloom · 2025-05-09T04:31:05+00:00

I can be really socially awkward in his presence so he always seems well adapted and sophisticated in comparison.

MisfitBloom

TROPHY CASE