The Elfhame Trilogy & The Jurdan and Reylo Effect on the YA Community & the World Too

If you read YA, or are a big fae in fantasy person, you have more than likely at least heard of the Cruel Prince and the series it belongs to. If you're on twitter or any social media with a YA fandom, you have probably seen bits and pieces from it if not read it yourself. If you've seen pieces of it, and read it, then you know of the wickedness of Cardan and the equal wickedness from Jude(let's not cut corners here, Jude is just as cruel and cutthroat as the fae, if not more so. She kind of had to be if she wanted to survive and stay.)

You know of the cruelty Cardan reigned down on Jude and if you've read the whole series you know of the way that he was also trying desperately to keep the others hurting her from going too far while never quite standing up for her, because he genuinely believed he couldn't. You know of the fact that Balekin his older brother was an abusive guardian figure to Cardan that eventually bit the dust.

You know that everything is not what it seems at first with this series.

But above all, you probably know of the discourse that sprouted around this book, that was there from the beginning that only really kicked off when people felt they had a kick off point. Something to point at.

The fans that don't care about the morality plays who are just there to read a good book and enjoy enemies to lovers, and those that think for some reason that enemies to lovers isn't really enemies but rivals to lovers.

But of course that was in the beginning, before we knew that Cardan was never really Jude's enemy, that he was softer than we ever could have imagined. A shining gem.

Before Queen of Nothing came out and revealed all, when Cruel Prince was hitting it's peak in interest and people were raving about the enemies to lovers ship of Jurdan, people were turning in their enemies to lovers books that they thought were really enemies to lovers(but were not), and publishers were selling these rivals to lovers books as being what they were really not. Ya fans picked these books up and fell in love with what they were being told was enemies to lovers.

Meanwhile, a couple years before The Cruel Prince came out, an actual enemies to lovers ship was making headlines and waves. Reylo, from the new, and recently deceased, Star Wars trilogy.

Reylo shippers were vilified and trashed and hated, torn apart, doxed, and that's not me being dramatic. People hate it when women start to think for themselves, and it's very clear that all of this vitriol was misogynisticly slanted, because plenty of Reylo fans are men, but they're treated decently, they're respected.

People made posts talking about how they wanted ships where the two were at odds and constantly fighting, classic enemies to lovers tropes. When the posts got popular and people tagged them with Reylo, the original posters would reblog and comment with things like "I wasn't talking about Reylo you disgusting pieces of ***" Just general horribleness. The usual you know, when you're talking to strangers on the internet who have literally never hurt you, ever, nor ever will. Then they'd say "I was talking about (rivals to lovers ship)." Same for posts describing the character of Kylo Ren to a T.

And on top of all that, Reylos get called Nazis. Because they want two fictional characters to kiss. Yes. I know. It sounds ridiculous, but it's true.

It was, and still is, quite literally, hell to even suggest you like Reylo or Kylo online in the YA community. If you are not in a safe zone, they will post screenshots of your tweets and mock you, spreading word that you're something awful that you aren't, but they've decided they want to ruin you so it's all good, you ship something they don't like so you deserve it.

And here's where we come back to The Cruel Prince.

People that viciously tear apart Reylos are suddenly falling in love with Jurdan and that whole thing, and yet have zero sympathy for anything else. They're being sold good books that are actually rivals to lovers that are advertised as enemies to lovers, and their points are being validated in this.

They think that teenagers that read something are automatically going to do that thing. They think that these teenage girls can't tell right from wrong, real life from fiction. And while yes, fiction can affect the real world, it is not okay to police fiction for things like this. Next, you're going to be telling the LGBTQ+ community we can't write about our experiences with homophobia "because what if some kid reads it and thinks homophobia is okay!" I promise you, they won't unless society pushes them towards it in other ways, and definitely not from a story that very surely tells you it's very wrong.

But I digress.

YA authors that wrote actual enemies to lovers ships into their books, that got compared to the Cruel Prince and Reylo because of it, they too have been torn apart. Emily A. Duncan, author of Wicked Saints wrote a bloody and brilliant story with an actual enemies to lovers ship in it. I scrolled through the reviews on Goodreads last night and saw a bevy of one star reviews of grown women violently tearing it down for the ship and clutching their pearls over the religion in the story. (This story isn't for you, don't read it, how hard is that to understand?)

What's next, we start arresting people for these books? The librarians that put them in teens hands when they come looking for the right story to stroke the fire of their imagination? (Emily Duncan herself is a children's librarian, I think she understands these teens far better than you do, random sixteen year old and thirty seven year old on twitter violently preaching against this)

Oh, right! There is a bill just like that being considered in Missouri right now! Yes, go look it up, I'm being entirely serious! The pearl clutching mothers that we hate that ban books we love are getting their way because you could not step back for two seconds and reconsider the power of your own hate. I hope you're ready for Fahrenheit 451 in real life!

However, it's not too late, I ask that you sit back if you are one of the people that thinks like this, that has hated with a passion those just trying to enjoy their fictional story. Sit back, rethink. Realize that it does not effect you if Tiffany on twitter reads a book with a ship where a girl and a boy hit each other with swords a lot and then kiss later. Just... Take a step back.

Fight the good fight for once.

And find some books that you enjoy and talk about those! I promise, your life will be so much better if you allow some joy in for once, rather than hate.

This is a big ol wall of text, but I hope you'll forgive me. When that bill came out I couldn't stay silent, even if this is a bag of rambling.