Tamlin The Tool - Tumblr Posts

Feyre, early ACOMAF, in the middle of a party: Do you guys ever think about dying?

Feyre in ACOMAF: I’m fine. It’s just that life is pointless and nothing matters and I’m always tired.

Tamlin: You’re a horrible person! 

Rhysand: Maybe. But I’m rich and I’m pretty, so it doesn’t really matter.

Okay, but can we also focus on the fact that Tamlin used Feyre’s line of “Why should I want someone else’s leftovers?” at the meeting with the High Lords. And Rhys—who had seen this exact same memory during one of the times he came to pick her up and Tamlin flashed his teeth at him—ripped away Tamlin’s ability to speak because he knew what Tamlin had been doing, what sort of reaction those words might trigger within Feyre’s mind. Tamlin deliberately chose those words, and every single action he did at that meeting, and you can’t change my mind. He’s an abuser, plain and simple.

“Let go,” I said as evenly as I could, but his claws punched out, imbedding in the wood above my hands. Still riding the magic, he was half-wild.

….

“Why should I want someone’s leftovers?” I said, making to push him away. He grabbed my hands again and bit my neck.

I cried out as his teeth clamped onto the tender spot where my neck met my shoulder. I couldn’t move—couldn’t think, and my world narrowed to the feeling of his lips and teeth against my skin. He didn’t pierce my flesh, but rather bit to keep me pinned. The push of his body against mine, the hard and the soft, made me see red—see lightning, made me grind my hips against his. I should hate him—hate him for his stupid ritual, for the female he’d been with tonight …

His bite lightened, and his tongue caressed the places his teeth had been. He didn’t move—he just remained in that spot, kissing my neck. Intently, territorially, lazily. Heat pounded between my legs, and as he ground his body against me, against every aching spot, a moan slipped past my lips.

He jerked away. The air was bitingly cold against my freed skin, and I panted as he stared at me. “Don’t ever disobey me again,” he said, his voice a deep purr that ricocheted through me, awakening everything and lulling it into complicity.

……

“I bit her,” Tamlin said, not pausing as he cut his steak. “We ran into each other in the hall after the Rite.”

I straightened in my chair.

“She seems to have a death wish,” he went on, cutting his meat. The claws stayed retracted but pushed against the skin above his knuckles. My throat closed up. Oh, he was mad—furious at my foolishness for leaving my room—but somehow managed to keep his anger on a tight, tight leash. “So, if Feyre can’t be bothered to listen to orders, then I can’t be held accountable for the consequences.” 

“Accountable?” I sputtered, placing my hands flat on the table. “You cornered me in the hall like a wolf with a rabbit!”

Lucien propped an arm on the table and covered his mouth with his hand, his russet eye bright.

“While I might not have been myself, Lucien and I both told you to stay in your room,” Tamlin said, so calmly that I wanted to rip out my hair.

I couldn’t help it. Didn’t even try to fight the red-hot temper that razed my senses. “Faerie pig!” I yelled, and Lucien howled, almost tipping back in his chair. At the sight of Tamlin’s growing smile, I left.

It took me a couple of hours to stop painting little portraits of Tamlin and Lucien with pigs’ features. But as I finished the last one—Two faerie pigs wallowing in their own filth, I would call it—I smiled into the clear, bright light of my private painting room. The Tamlin I knew had returned.

And it made me … happy.

We’re going to have a very, very long talk about this scene and the exquisite way that it’s set up; SJM has just done so brilliantly with this relationship and with Feyre’s responses to it (I might talk about Rhys as well because there are some interesting parallels to be dug out here both with him and Tamlin but also with Feysand/Feylin. But first, first I’m going to tear this scene and Tamlin to shreds) 

Okay we’ll just do this in the order it happens that seems to make the most sense. That first quote of Feyre’s ‘let go’ she deliberately asks him to release her and he refuses, in fact he lets his claws dig into the wood above her, pinning her in place. Alarm bells should be blazing in everyone’s heads right now this is not okay.  

But what’s perhaps more telling and interesting about this bit is that Feyre makes excuses for him. That ‘still riding the magic’ which we know isn’t entirely true because if Tamlin was so far gone with this magic that he couldn’t control himself and couldn’t be held accountable for his actions he wouldn’t have gentled the bite as he does later on and he wouldn’t have walked away from her. This pattern of behaviour is something that Lucien shows too, in this book and in ACOMAF, that ‘you don’t hold onto power by being everyone’s friend’ line, they both make excuses for Tamlin’s brutality and behaviour because they don’t want to see him for what he is.

Then we get the biting incident which is something he uses in part to ‘keep her pinned’. It’s a gesture of control, it’s a gesture of control through aggression which was foreshadowed earlier by Lucien telling Feyre he’d shred anyone who came after him for disobeying him. He does it again in ACOMAF, he punishes Lucien for pushing back against him and he punishes Feyre by wrecking the study for calling him out on his behaviour and it’s shown at the Tithe as well: you pay your dues, you do as you’re told, or I’ll hunt you down.

This is exactly the same thing. “Don’t ever disobey me again,” this wasn’t Tamlin being amped up on magic and if you strip away Feyre’s blindness and the way she romanticises this moment it’s clear what happens. Feyre disobeyed him. Feyre didn’t do as she was told. So he punishes her with an act of physical aggression that frightens her.

It’s conditioning in a way? Which I think is more clearly seen with Lucien and that trigger line ‘Don’t push me’ (but don’t disobey me is close enough here) which after that follows punishment. Lucien knows what to expect from pushing back against Tamlin or disobeying him; he’s come to learn that it results in pain and punishment and he warns Feyre against it in ACOMAF. But all of that behaviour was seen before and set up for is in this book. His victims come to expect outbursts of aggression and go out of their way to be meek and comply with him and avoid triggering it.

This scene was upsetting and worrying in itself but it’s what follows the next day when she sees Tamlin again that really seals the deal on this whole thing being unhealthy and toxic and deliberate. Tamlin blames Feyre. Tamlin blames Feyre for his behaviour, behaviour he was in complete control of that’s not where he’s passing the buck. It’s her fault because she broke the rules, she disobeyed him, so he had to dish out that punishment.

He isn’t accountable for the consequences of her actions because this is just what comes from not doing as you’re told around Tamlin: you get punished. That’s not something he’s accountable for, that’s not something he has the power to change: only her. Her actions drove everything there. It’s another part of that conditioning type thing I was talking about, his responses aren’t within his control, they’re all driven by his victims. He’s victim-blaming. Plain and simple. My outburst/violence/aggression wasn’t my fault it was yours. He does something similar in ACOMAF after the study incident, it wasn’t his fault, it was the rage, I can’t control it, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me is the bottom line here with Tamlin and it’s incredibly damaging.

Feyre calls him out on it but that doesn’t make it any less worrying for an insight into the way that Tamlin thinks and works, especially not when it’s a behaviour that we see repeated. But again what makes this scene even more worrying in hindsight is Feyre’s reaction to what happens (which is a very understandable reaction to being in this situation)

“The Tamlin I knew had returned. And it made me….happy” This is the big, big problem with Tamlin and Feyre’s relationship and the reason I think that she doesn’t immediately see how bad and toxic her relationship with Tamlin is at the beginning of ACOMAF even though we and the Inner Circle can quite plainly see. She repeats Tamlin’s behaviour. She does exactly what he does here. She blames his behaviour on something other than him; she doesn’t hold him fully accountable for it.

There are several times at the beginning of ACOMAF where she makes the distinction between her Tamlin and High Lord Tamlin. High Lord Tamlin is cruel and brutal and controlling and awful but her Tamlin is gentle and kind and compassionate.

“I don’t want to marry a High Lord. I just want to marry him.” Feyre  - ACOMAF

She makes them out as two separate things which allows her to avoid giving Tamlin full responsibility for his actions and allows her to forgive him for what he’s doing. It wasn’t really him; it was the High Lord. But it’s all set up here: this is something that Tamlin taught her to do the moment he told her she was accountable not him: it’s never him. Implicitly or not this is the message she repeats in ACOMAF and it keeps her trapped in her situation a lot longer than she could have/should have been.  

There’s an obvious contrast to be made with Rhysand here who does something very similar. He has two different personas in a similar way: Rhys and the High Lord of the Night Court. Which sounds eerily similar to what’s going on here. But Rhys never does what Tamlin does. He never tries to make a divide between the two. He is both at once. He is responsible for both at once. He feels guilty for the things that he did Under the Mountain as that High Lord and he feels guilty for the things that Amarantha forced him to do but he never passes the blame. He never says ‘it wasn’t me’; he never absolves himself of the things that he’s done whatever the circumstance.

It is possible to wear these two masks; to be two different people, the one you are and the one the world sometimes demands you to be in order to survive it but they are both a part of you. You don’t get to say ‘that wasn’t me it was the High Lord; I’m not like that really; I don’t do those things’ you don’t get to absolve yourself of what you do under either of those guises. You are responsible for the things that you’ve done; you are accountable for the choices that you make good or bad; even if those bad choices were made for the right reasons; even if you didn’t want to make them you did.

That for me is one of the biggest differences between these two characters. Accountability. Rhys holds himself accountable for all of the things that he’s done:

“I love my people, and my family. Do not think I wouldn’t become a monster to keep them protected.” Rhys - ACOMAF 

Not don’t think I wouldn’t pretend to be a monster; not don’t think I wouldn’t act as a monster or do monstrous things; don’t think I wouldn’t become a monster. Rhys will become a monster if he must and he will hold his hands up and say that that’s what he is; that’s what he did. He doesn’t make excuses for it. He doesn’t say that why he’s become a monster makes it alright. He just says he will become a monster. He will do what he must. And he will take full responsibility for that.

I will become a monster. I will do what I need to do. I will say that it’s necessary. But I will not say it’s right. And I will not make excuses. I will not seek to absolve myself of what I’ve done because this is what the world forced me to be. The world forced me to become this thing and I made the choice to become it and I accept that.

It’s a subtle difference with the way Tamlin acts; pretending that the High Lord isn’t a part of him isn’t who or what he is but it is. Rhys understands that. Tamlin does not. Tamlin constantly sees to absolve himself of blame or responsibility and it’s incredibly damaging for him as a person and it’s incredibly damaging for the people around him who are influenced by this and controlled by it and kept loyal to him through it.

This relationship has just been masterfully built up. I’m in awe of this I genuinely am. It’s incredibly carefully, incredibly sensitively, and incredibly cleverly done. All of the warning signs for Tamlin were there, all of those unhealthy behaviours and not only do they foreshadow what happens in ACOMAF they very clearly and explicitly set it up to happen. All of the things that keep Feyre trapped in her relationship with Tamlin begin in ACOTAR; of the learned responses that keep her with him start here. This relationship was always unhealthy; it was always abusive; it always manipulated Feyre it just took her a long time, some perspective, and someone who shows her the appropriate way to act in every way that Tamlin did not for her to realise it.