if youre trans and getting misgendered/deadnamed by your family during holiday gatherings im giving you a hug over the internet rn
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I will be removing myself from situations
If something is happening, well, I certainly do not want anything to do with that
I’ve always struggled with why I like Aelin so much. Not in that I feel as if I shouldn’t love her—I wholeheartedly adore Aelin. She’d my favorite character from, like, anything. She’s a total chaotic-good badass in the same vein as Matrim Cauthon (my SON) and Magnus Bane.
But like…why this character? Why have I chosen this one to devote an entire blog life to? I mean seriously, I’ve been reading fantasy books forever, and though I’ve read books I initially love as much as ToG (Kate Daniels, the Fever Series), ToG is what I’ve stuck with longest in terms of obsession. And it’s largely due to Aelin.
While I was reading The Assassin’s Blade the other day, I was struck by just how angry Aelin is. She’s in Skull’s Bay and she’s just…fixing for a fight. She’s this hot ball of rage, of fury, of untamed, unfettered anger.
And that’s when I realized how few female characters we get who are this angry, who are allowed to be so angry. I mean in real life, anger is a masculine coded emotion. We associate it with men, it is accepted within men, and while men are viewed as having anger, women are viewed as being emotional. (you can check out Stephanie Shields Speaking From the Heart: Gender and the Social Meaning of Emotions for more on this). In other words, women are viewed as being innately emotional. Women’s emotions are coded as being part of who they are, not due to some external force. So she’s being emotional, rather than reacting appropriately to something that has happened. And we view the only acceptable emotion in men as anger.
This leaves very little space for female anger. Either you’re being “overly emotional” or “over reacting.” Or, you’re being too masculine. You’re angry, like a man. Your rage is not something people want to see.
In fiction, we get so few angry female characters. And I mean truly angry characters. Not momentary anger. Not the anger of Inej telling Kaz she will have him without his armor. Not the anger of Hermione yelling at Harry for not speaking to Ron in book 4. Not the anger of Elizabeth turning down Darcy’s proposal. A raging, burning, angry female character. Where is she?
She’s Aelin. Aelin, for all of the Assassin’s Blade, for ToG, CoM, and most of HoF, is angry. She’s furious. At the King, at the empire, at Chaol, at Rowan, at Maeve, and finally, at herself. She has other moments of course. She’s happy, she’s sad, she cries, she laughs, she enjoys herself. But underneath it is the well of anger, anger that she rarely accesses, because as she explains to Rowan, “I’m afraid I’d burn the whole world down out of spite.”
And we see that anger break free at times. When she kills Archer Flynn. When she yells at Emrys and Luca. When she screams at Rowan about the fae genocide. When she beats him up. She keeps her anger leashed, for the most part, and HoF is really where we see that anger crest and break the dam. It’s so deliciously good.
Because why shouldn’t she be angry? She’s been dealt a shit hand. Her family murdered, her kingdom colonized, her best friends murdered, her childhood dominated by an abusive monster, her first love dead, her second love hates her and on and on. Why shouldn’t Aelin Galathynius be pissed?
I think why so many people see a change in her post HoF is that in part, she loses the anger. That’s okay. You can’t be angry forever, and part of her journey is allowing herself to release that anger, to acknowledge it, to stop pushing it down. Throne of Glass is, I think, at its core the story of a young woman learning to let herself be angry and then conquering that anger. In QoS and EoS she’s still the cocky, badass, chaotic-good, witty Aelin that we know and love. But she’s a lot less angry. Yes, she’s still pissed. At Darrow, at Maeve, at Elana, at the Gods damned gods. But…she’s learned to be okay with that anger. She’s realized that she won’t burn the whole world down.
Anyways, I love Aelin because she’s angry. And I love SJM for giving us an angry female character. And I love her even more for doing it again with Nesta.
I could not agree or more. I am an angry woman and I have never related to a character more than I have to Aelin and I appreciate that.
This image is cursed, but not toward you, rather against any that try to wrong you.
THIS IMAGE IS A WARD
