Discussion: Who Does SJM Write For?

*Disclaimer: this is a rant-y post about genres and Maas’ books, namely A Court of Thorns and Roses with a long tirade about why I hate the love interests. Be forewarned, I came for your fave’s throat.*

There’s been a lot of talk lately about who Sarah J. Maas writes for. In case you haven’t been to Twitter in the past two days, there’s been a ... discussion going on centering around a bookish subscription box released this week that contained adult content for the young adult novel A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. Among many conversations being had over this controversial sub box, some are raising the question: who the hell does Maas write her books for?

It’s a complicated topic, but I want to get into it. First, I think it’s important to acknowledge how different her two ongoing series are. Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses, though they have similar elements, are vastly different series. In my personal opinion, this is partially because they should be in different age range categories.

But they aren’t. Maas identifies as a young adult writer, and all of her books will be shelved in the YA section of any store.

Some argue that ACoTaR is new adult or NA, an emerging category in fiction that centers around the experience of those entering adulthood in their young twenties, often college students. Content is typically a bit more mature than YA, featuring more sex, drugs, alcohol and adult responsibilities (y'know, like paying bills or defeating evil queens). This category is so new that many publishers don’t even recognize it, stores don’t have specific sections for it, and books that should be labeled NA must be decidedly labeled YA or adult. Since Maas's debut success Throne of Glass was YA, marketing says that the rest of Maas’s books get labelled that as well.

To me, that’s a problem.

Some people argue that even ToG can be considered NA. I disagree with this. I think ToG follows all YA norms and represents a protagonist who truly appeals more to teens than adults. Sure, the series can get gruesome, dark, and even steamy, but I don’t think these things preclude it from being appropriate for young adults. I personally like ToG, and I find it to be a great trashy YA that just happens to be a fantasy. Not all fantasy has to be literary, epic, and life-changing. Teens clearly don’t need it to be, seeing the popularity of this series.

Then there’s ACoTaR. I really, really hate this book. This book was not written for teens, and I don’t like that it’s shelved for teens. Sure, teens can read it. Most books I read in high school were adult books. But to be exclusively marketing this book for teens is wrong.

And it’s not because of the sex.

I’ll only say it once: YA can have sex in it. Teens have sex. For a variety of reasons and with a variety of experiences. Why shouldn’t that be mirrored in their fiction? Why do you think smutty fanfiction is so popular? Because teens want to read about sex. So relax about it.

My problem is who the sex is with. How the sex is portrayed. And also the fact there is literally no theme or arc that is relevant to modern teens. Let’s get into that:

My problem is who the sex is with.

There’s two love interests in the ACoTaR series. The main character, Feyre, is 19, but how old are her love interests? "Ancient." Since they are not actually human, they have lived many lifetimes before little ol’ Feyre was even born. Their bodies are described as appearing in their twenties, though fanart often makes them appear late twenties/thirties. No wonder so many ACoTaR fans are older women. The love interests are literally written for them.

Besides that, they are also horrible. Like truly problematic and terrible. Book One follows Feyre’s ‘Beauty & the Beast’ love story with Tamlin, until he’s captured by an evil queen and she needs to free him. Her love story with him is okay, kind of bland. UNTIL. The Calanmai scene. That’s when my opinion of this book flipped on its head. I remember reading it and my gut twisting--I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Tamlin was literally sexually assaulting our protagonist.

Basically, Calanmai is some weird Fae ritual where the High Lord of the realm goes all animalistic and dogs some Fae girl. Whatever, I can see that. But then Tamlin shows up back home in the house where he was imprisoning Feyre in the first place (because Beauty & the Beast I guess) and comes onto her even though she explicitly says no. My biggest problem with this scene it’s that it’s written to be hot. Passionate. But Feyre is also uncomfortable, and never gives verbal consent. She gives the opposite of that. A hard no. She says “Let go.”

My dudes, this is sexual assault.

Not to mention that the day after Calanmai, Tamlin makes Feyre apologize. Are. You. Kidding. Me. Manipulation at its finest. And that is absolutely not romantic.

The next love interest is Rhysand. I’ve read enough of the sequel, A Court of Mist and Fury, to know that Maas does an excellent job of turning us against Tamlin and making us fall for Rhysand. Here’s the thing though: he is abusive to Feyre as well.

In ACoTaR, Rhysand for some reason decides to ‘help’ Feyre defeat the evil queen to save Tamlin (and by extension, all Fae), but his means are by sexually demeaning her or even just plain violence. I actually hate Rhysand even more than Tamlin. Let’s begin.

1. He blackmails Feyre. After her first challenge, she gets a broken arm and he tells her he won’t heal her unless she makes a deal with him to spend a week every month with him or something creepy. She doesn’t want to, but he literally twists her arm until it’s so painful she agrees.

2. He uses her as a prop and tells her it’s for her own good. He brings her to court as a plaything, dressing her in see-through, skimpy dresses that make her embarassed and painting her body so that he can see if anyone touches her. I was so disgusted by this I wanted to throw up.

3. He drugs her. A character named Alis tells Feyre earlier in the book not to drink the Fae wine, but Rhysand literally forces Feyre to drink the wine every night, resulting in an altered state. It’s more than just being drunk, she is barely cognizant of what’s happening at court around her, and more pliable to his demands like ‘dance on me’ and other gross shit.

4. He wanted her to stop crying for some reason so he LICKS HER TEARS FROM HER FACE. Even Feyre says it's disgusting and he basically goes "eh you liked it." Uh, BITCH?!?

5. There’s some other little things that irritated me, but at the end of it all, they became friends, because he was just ‘pretending’ in order to ‘help’ her. He wanted to change the way everyone thought of her so they’d underestimate her or something and she could come out on top. IT WAS WEIRD. It was manipulative. And above all, Maas wrote a disgusting portrayal of it all. Which leads me to my next point.

My problem is how it is portrayed.

It’s one thing to include all of these things in your book, but it absolutely matters how you portray it. The Calanmai scene with Tamlin was depicted as sexy, not problematic. Same with many of Rhysand’s scenes, but they have the added bonus of him feeling a little bit bad for it which is supposed to erase all of his wrongdoings away. Readers are supposed to ship Feyre with one or the other by the end of the book, but I really just felt bad for her (among thinking she was kind of dumb, but that’s a discussion for another day). She had two awful options, and in the end, she winds up with “I only abused you because I had to” Rhysand.

Except here’s what people forget--the story isn’t actually true. Maas wrote it. She came up with each plot point with her own mind and wrote each scene with her own two hands. Tamlin could have helped himself. Feyre could have given consent. Either way, problem solved. But Maas didn’t write it that way.

Rhysand could have found some other way to accomplish his goals. He could have had the same character, the same personality and good looks that make him beloved by middle-aged white women everywhere, but Maas didn’t write him like that. To be clear, he isn’t a ‘bad boy’ character. He’s a predator made to seem sexy. That’s a problem in fiction in general, but to put it in children’s fiction? Disgusting.

My problem is that there is literally no YA relevance.

How are any of these things relevant to teens? Let’s be serious, a lot of younger readers don’t have a ton of experience with romance, so they enjoy that ‘obsessive supernatural lover’ trope. And even if it’s unrealistic, there’s nothing really wrong with someone fantasizing about a boy who is eternally young & beautiful and unconditionally loves you. When the romance starts to show abuse and obsession as romantic? As sexy? That’s a problem.

Teens aren’t going to have forever romances. They aren’t going to be magically soul-mated to some perfect person. But sometimes as a young adult, relationships can feel a little like that. Or they can want to feel a little like that. And what are we telling teens is okay to accept in a relationship? What are we telling teens about their desires, what they can and can’t ‘help’? Teens are in no way dumb--they’re actually pretty brilliant. But oftentimes their worldview is still small. They’re still developing it and growing. And books along with other media are a huge part of that.

There’s nothing else that I really feel a teen can grab onto in these books. Feyre isn’t navigating school or family. She actually ignores her family for most of the book (more typical of NA conventions). She isn’t entering in a new phase of her life and having new experiences….well, unless you call getting kidnapped by a shape-shifting, hundreds-of-years-old faerie a phase of life. She’s being underestimated, sure, but only because she’s human, not because of her age. I guess you could argue that it shows determination of the human spirit….but then again, she’s rewarded for this by being turned into Fae. So.

This book just doesn’t appear to me to be written with teenagers in mind. It seems like it was written with Sarah J Maas, a thirty-something white woman, in mind. And that’s what I see mirrored in many of her fans. Except the book isn’t shelved for them, it’s shelved for teens. And teens love this book, too, don’t get me wrong, I just worry how detrimental it is for this book to be shelved among true YA pieces.

And now we come back to the sub box. It makes me feel pretty yucky that you could take a YA book and make an adult NSFW box out of it. I get it, there’s sex in the books. But the books are supposedly for teens. The fans should be largely teens, and fan content should be for and by teens. When you throw “adult boxes” into the mix, you’re co-opting a fandom that should be for young people. I’m not saying you can’t participate in the fandom or enjoy the books as an adult, but remember that if you’re not a teenager, the book isn’t for you.

I don’t like that ACoTaR is shelved as YA precisely for this reason. The book is kind of written for older women, so when they pull stuff like this, it’s hard to blame them. But at the end of the day, the publisher made a marketing decision, and we as adults should respect that and use our platforms to the best of our abilities to spread the right messages and be respectful to younger readers.

If you’re a writer, I urge you to really consider your audience before you label your work as YA. Just because a character is young doesn’t make it YA. There’s more to the genre than age of a character. The genre is based on age of the reader. Make sure you’re writing what’s actually relevant to them. Not just a book for adults that happens to have a 19 year old protagonist.

But anyway the #dicksoap was kind of funny.

Peace out & don’t insert the soap,

Grace K.

Agree? Disagree? I'd love to hear opinions!