MALINA KISS WE SAW MALINA KISS SOUND THE ALARM AHHH IM GONNA DIE
i’m sure someone will have better screenshots than this but hereeeee
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@darklinganti
MALINA KISS WE SAW MALINA KISS SOUND THE ALARM AHHH IM GONNA DIE
i’m sure someone will have better screenshots than this but hereeeee
Actually i think that the main conceit of the original grishaverse trilogy is that there Was in fact an assumption of An Amount of critical thinking and analysis skills that. not to stir up shit. are a bit rare in the circles of YA fandom and YA fandom enjoyers. ESPECIALLY regarding the darkling. Everyone is allowed to have one (1) tumblr sexyman style villain that they no holds barred hate and he is mine.
so the thing about the darkling. the Thing about the darkling is that hes absolutely a satirical and critical version of the sort of Immortal Hot Boy (antihero flavor) who is i think possibly best shown in Edward Cullen and Erik phantom of the opera. Hes powerful! hes hot! hes Deeply Fucked Up! he’s unavoidably an abuser!
ANYWAYS BOOKVERSE SPOILER WARNING since im putting this in the tag, also i don’t know how to format a read more so Long Post! sorry.
however Immortal Hot Boy trope is SO prevalent in early 2010s YA fiction that it genuinely does not occur to people to question even after you get shown a parade of his red flags. the fact that the darkling is a. of a comparable power to alina and b. seems to take her powers and autonomy seriously makes him PRIME shipping material especially if You, an enjoyer of early 2010s YA fantasy and fandom, are already used to this extremely specific parade of red flags being portrayed as hot and desireable. its an unavoidable cliche of the genre (spike from Buffy, snape, Rath Roiben Rye from Tithe, the list goes on) and he is absolutely set up as a love interest Would Be, narratively. but heres the thing:
Shadow and Bone (the books) fundamentally Are Not YA Fantasy and Romance books. theyre action/adventure tragedy books written for teenaged girls.
Alina Isnt the typical Strong Female Protagonist (Look At How Well We In The Writing Room Do Female Representation flavor) literally On Purpose. Alina does, in fact, just want to Go Home. however, she Is in fact a feminist character as honestly? the deciding metric for whether a book Respects Women is whether their characters are treated with respect and consideration (in the writing. books that portray misogyny do not become unfeminist by doing so) and Alina’s character (and zoya, genya, and tamar) is. Alina’s only stated goals from the beginning of the series is that she wants a. to go home and start an orphanage, b. to hang out with her best friend, and c. maybe be romantically involved with her best friend if he is so inclined. thats it. no this is not particularly GirlbossTM of her but GirlbossTM characters are not the only type of valid female character okay. but then it turns out that alina has actually God Level Powers, which, and I cannot be more clear here, she does not want.
It is therefore narratively important that alina has her choice of love interests throughout the series. in S&B, alina’s crush on mal appears unrequited and inopportune, something that has the power to ruin her current relationship with mal and not do much else. in contrast, the darkling is mysterious, attractive, and, most importantly, clearly interested in her, even if his interest mainly manifests in terms of interest in her power. he presents himself to her as the only one in the world who can understand her (which. red flag.) but in doing so, he assumes that her entire previous identity will be subsumed by being the sun summoner, which it never is. throughout the series, alina remains consistently alina. There is, throughout his expressions of interest, never any doubt that he would act exactly the same to another girl with the same power set, as he is, ultimately, not attracted to alina, but to the sun summoner. Even if this was his only problem, that’s still Not Ideal, since that’s absolutely objectification. this is not immediately evident on a cursory or first reading, both due to imperfect writing and the use of a non-omniscient and therefore semi-unreliable narrator.
Then he stops being a viable love interest as it is revealed that in fact he has a history of manipulating girls and young women under his power. The most egregrious example of this is Genya, who murders the king on what is revealed to be the darkling’s orders, and then reveals that the king has been raping her. Genya is the most beautiful girl in ravka, which can be and often is construed as a sort of power, but is one that she has no choice in. the Darkling’s manipulation of genya here cannot be overlooked either, since he does use her as a tool in his warmongering and then a scapegoat. there are Absolutely parrallels to be drawn here to alina’s situation: the darkling takes advantage of a young woman’s quest for power (or not even that— arguably, just the wish to get out of a bad situation) and then uses this to take her power from her. The darkling may not have had sexual or romantic intent towards genya, but this act Was an expression of his power and control. Genya is, by committing this act, forced to remain with the darkling, as this act, no matter how justified it was, is still treasonous. Alina, similarly, is manipulated into a quest for power that ends with power taken from her by the darkling, where he literally collars her with the antlers, which then allow him to control her powers without her consent, as if she were nothing more than an instrument. symbolically this is extremely significant, but this is a tumblr post and not a thesis. the important part:
The Darkling is not interested in Alina as a person, but in the power alina has and how it can be used to benefit him. even though the sun summoner may be most powerful with the darkling, Alina is ultimately a tool to him, and has no power in their interactions.
that’s horrifying! the darkling is unarguably a villain for that! not to mention that he knew what was happening to genya (and certainly dozens of other girls), had the power to stop it, and chose not to! and yet that is, when taken to its end, the ultimate conclusion of the Immortal Hot Boy With Magic Powers: controlling, manipulative, and genuinely? fucked up. the darkling IS meant to portray this as Actively Fucked Up, but a lack of narrative control and audience expectations did. well.
For the sake of it, though, i might as well get into the rest of alina’s love interests, because the implications and power balance in all of those relationships are fascinating to consider and write about.
second: nikolai, the spare royal, secret bastard, and Actual privateer. He’s not even a consideration until the second book, but, like the darkling, he also offers Alina power in exchange for the use of her own, but he, at least, is honest that his offer is not really romantically inclined, and explains it all for her: her power as the sun summoner will legitimize his reign (as. he is also the Only remaining legitimized member of the royal family). Nikolai’s honesty does put him over the darkling in terms of Alina’s romantic prospects, but he still wants the sun summoner, and not alina. nikolai represents a cause, not a romantic interest, and while their interests align for the duration of the war, alina Does Not Want political power, a life at court, or any of the things that a more permanent relationship with nikolai will unavoidably require. Alina’s goals and nikolai’s are fundamentally different, since alina is a commendably consistent character, who still just wants to run a countryside orphanage with mal.
finally there’s mal. He is Absolutely Nothing compared to A Thousand Year Old Wizard God and The Next King. But he wants Alina. He doesnt care if she has powers, and remains the Only one of her love interests who is Actually Interested in who she is, instead of what she can do for him. in any other book, the main girl character giving everything up to date a mediocre dude and run an orphanage is not, particularly, great. However, this Isn’t any other book: by dating her bestie and running away to an orphanage in the countryside Alina is fulfilling her Only Stated Goal. The sun summoner’s powers have only even been used to control her and arguably when her powers were strongest she had the least narrative agency as she was imprisoned and used as the figurehead of a cult. Alina was a living martyr even Before she faked her death. she Does Not Win and even symbolically loses by becoming powerful enough to fight the darkling: so she Doesn’t.
Alina’s agency comes from her choice, and not her powers, and her powers are intrinsically not her choice, which is why the final battle cannot be fought by her. if alina really Is the Only One powerful enough to fight the darkling, then the darkling is proven right, and the entire war does Not matter: if Only Alina can fight, then the war was over in book one, because the stag’s antlers mean that the darkling can control alina’s powers. and that’s nihilistic and depressing.
Even alina thinks that this is true, though: she thinks that everything comes down to an ancient and extended scavenger hunt, and she thinks she has no choices. yes, completing morozova’s trinity renders her Physically unable to fight, but mentally and symbolically she was unable to fight either chapters or books previous to the final battle. ironically, she regains the ability to choose after losing her powers, since her agency is not related to her power level, but to her choices.
It doesn’t matter what alina chooses to do, but it Does matter that she has the power of choice. Alina is, in this way, a better-written character than any of the sort of GirlbossTM Strong Female Character types that were really Very much her contemporaries.
and, as an addendum: no, it’s not particularly great writing. you can sort of see the loose strings, even if they’re not particularly important loose strings, but you can see the writing get Much better as you read, and, like, the themes Are more complicated than the writing can support. this is a subversion propped up by the bones of the narrative it subverts, and they’re not particularly strong bones. yes a great deal of it is expectations projected onto a narrative and a lack of critical analysis. however, the narrative actively welcomes projected expectations and only reveals that they’re being subverted twenty pages later. so.
sometimes i think about how cool it is that alina killed her abuser, saved ravka, and then took her favorite boys and said ✌🏻
The way that "I am become a blade" is a running joke for some weird reason by people who don’t understand Mal’s character and lack reading comprehension - because that line and that tattoo it is in fact one of the most beautiful things one can do/say to Alina.
Alina, who’s been used and taken advantage of the whole trilogy by powerful men. Manipulated, slaved and tortured by The Darkling to use her powers to cause destruction. Used by Nikolai for some political agenda so he can increase his power with the people of Ravka. Used by the Apparat that worships her and expect her to be a saint. All of those men can give Alina power, money, status, people that worships her and are loyal to her, but there’s a condition - to be the sun summoner, a queen or a saint. Not Alina.
Then Mal, he just offers himself to her unconditionally. He vows to be a blade in her hands - a weapon. He is telling her to use him for her own agenda, to have her agency. He doesn’t have power, he doesn’t have money, he can’t offer her anything else expect himself. His tracking abilities, his fighting experience, his blood, his life. He marked his body with that vow. And he delivered every time.
Mal - who’s always been valued for what he looks like, the physical strength he possesses, his tracking ability. Mal, who could literally make a living for himself anywhere because he is just that good, but also Mal, who’s a child-soldier, a teenager that doesn’t know anything else expect serving a country that has taken everything from him. Mal is not longer serving a country, he is a deserter. His propose is Alina. He is there to simply gave himself completely to her. Because he loves her, and Alina doesn’t need to be anything else expect Alina. And he is willing to serve her without conditions.
[Also, Leigh literally said that quote is not even bad grammatically - it’s supposed to be on ancient Ravkan, and the English translation is like the famous phase: 'I am become death'.]
He’s literally telling her…you have my body and my soul. Use me as you want. I’m yours completely. And I think that’s one of the most romantic symbols of love I’ve seen in YA.
that scene on Ruin and Rising where Alina is practicing the cut with Baghra and everyone is like making bets and assuming she’s going to fail, and then comes Mal offering thirty that she won’t only manage to hit that one cloud but hit the one behind it and she’s like "I can’t, that’s like five miles away,” and he is like "yeah, more like six miles" and his tone is challenging because he knows Alina can do it, and then she does end up succeeding. But this is the same man the fandom has described as being "afraid of powerful women" or "limits her" when he actually motivated Alina and ensured her the powers not matter the cost.
Well-structured dramas about groups of criminals attempting to break into a secured facility during a major religious holiday
Rule of Wolves twitter AU
what if the darkling had to fart to activate his shadow powers
defending mal oretsev on the internet isn't enough i need a gun
i am become a gun
fmk:
the grisha trilogy, soc duology, the nikolai duology
saw a volcra today...effervescent
Ok but we NEED to talk about this interview with Leigh Bardugo and SJM. The interviewer asks what character is their favourite from each other's series, and Sarah answers Mal is her favourite in shadow and bone because "he is so hot" and "makes her sweaty".
Now, Mal is between the ages of 17 and 18 in the trilogy, just like Alina. This interview was 5 years ago, and Sarah was 30. So, basically this is a 30 year old grown woman talking about feeling attracted to a character while he is literally a teenager in the books. This, when most of her work is targeted as YA and sold for actual teens.
What makes it even worse is that Leigh opened up about being a victim of SA as a child not long ago. She's there having to listen to an adult YA writer go off about how she feels sexually attracted to her teen character.
She laughs but she seems to be unconfortable, then follows with a "isn't she classy" in a tone that doesn't actually suggested it being the case.
Don't come at me with "he is just a character" or "he doesn't exist" thing. Yeah, is obvious Mal doesn't exist, but the point is that she still imagines him as a teen in her head and feels attracted to that image. Leigh writed Mal and Alina as teenagers/kids because that's what they were. If that was a man in his 30s saying he though 17-18 Alina was "super hot" and talking about him sweating thinking about her, I bet there would be a lot more people talking about it. I'm just not ok with an author who writes for teens talking about feeling something for one, even if he is fictional, because the idea she has on her mind of him and is drawn to is still of a child.
I'm not trying to cancel her or anything, but I don't want to hear people asking why Leigh stopped being friends with Sarah after a while. And this is not the first time that someothing of this nature happened. There was also the whole soap thing, that they tried to brush under the rugs, together with the fact that her books should have been always targeted as adult and not YA considering their content, even her ex best friend Susan Dennard talked about this (which I want so say preach since not every author talks about those things). I'm also tired of seeing adults talking about having attraction towards teenagers and everybody pretending like is normal, when it truly isn't, in any type of context.
damn right op, its fucking pedophilic
I just... I’m so sick of this movement in YA toward gritty Bad Boy/Strong Woman romances and plots that are only about power and revenge. If I pick up another highly-recommended book wherein the dark-haired white boy love interest is a violent abuser and the vast majority of the readership seems to eat up a romance where the characters don’t even like each other I think I’m gonna go postal. Shadow and Bone, which I loved, seems to speak directly to this on so many levels: Alina’s sun powers come and go, but her inner strength, her protective spirit, her resolve only grows throughout the series, and she ends the trilogy not politically powerful, but happy, and loved, and at home. Leigh just so masterfully sets up the powerful-ingenue and ancient-magic-user dynamic, gives them all the poetic symmetry in the world, all of the promises of power and magic, and none of the ingredients for actual love. Everything the Darkling does is a lie. Alina rightly sees him at the end of the path she’s on and turns away and gives everything to stop him. Bardugo’s work directly refutes this trend in YA and people just blatantly ignore it in favor of romanticizing the Darkling.
It honestly scares me so much that not just teenage girls but grown, thirty-year-old women, and the majority of people who read books like ACoTaR and ToG compare them to books like Howl’s Moving Castle and SaB without any critical eye to the character’s moral actions, desire to improve, and willingness to actually love the Badass Female Character instead of just being obsessed with her and pandering to the sexual fantasies of readers. (And, god, not even well: there is fantastic erotica in the world, and Sarah Janet Maas has written exactly none of it.)
Turning stories of love and found family into stories of the Powered Magical Badass Woman doing Whatever She Wants (or wondering why in the world Alina didn’t join the man who sold Genya into sexual slavery in being an imperialist, manipulative conquerors for the sake of Cool Points) is super dangerous. Fiction doesn’t have to adhere to Puritanical moral standards or be without flaw, but reinterpreting evil characters with no desire to be better as Hot Sad Boys sexualises and romanticizes abuse. There’s not another way around it. It has real-world repercussions.
And God, can you really read the line, ‘they had an ordinary life, full of ordinary things– if love can ever be called that,’ and wish that Alina has decided to rule the world instead?
You can tell the last anon didn’t read the books or are those that will read anything into Alina’s characterization to say she’s "miserable" with the live she chose for herself at the orphanage when it’s literally explained that she viewed the orphanage as her safe home as long as she lives in it with Mal - but then those are also the ones that claim she was embracing her true nature during the little palace when Alina was having a full on mental breakdown for 2 books in a row - being S&S the one where she was literally on her lowest, awaken by nightmares, filled with guilt, thrown into political dramas, getting assaulted without her consent, isolated from Mal and while gaining power (and greed) she was also dealing with the lack of mental control and agency. Alina ended book 2 trying to kill herself - but they claim that she was just "embracing herself" as if Alina admitting to wanting to die wasn’t the loudest wake up call. Those people will ignore everything Alina said as long as they can convince themselves Alina lives a miserable life so they feel "justified" about hating her ending - when all she ever wanted was to sleep peacefully and live on her own terms - something she wasn’t going to get from the palace or any other life that still needed her to be a saint, queen or sun summoner. And the fact that Alina despised the court life and then people to this day think she could’ve been better off as a queen.
I got nothing to add here because you said it perfectly anon. All of this. THIS IS NOT COMPLICATED TO GRASP. Alina’s arc and what ACTUALLY brings her happiness is not hard to understand, at all. Some people are just determined to not see it.
kept hearing abt how mal is such an asshole in the books and alina deserves better than him………… but like…. im on siege and storm and mal deserves better. he deserves so much better.
‘of course. did the darkling love my aunt who died beside countless innocent civilians in novokribirsk so that he could show the world his might?
did he love the girl he forced to commit those murders? what about the girl he tossed into the old king’s bed for his own purposes, then mutilated when she dared to challenge him. or the woman he blinded for failing to offer him unswerving devotion?
who would speak for liliyanna, for genya and alina and baghra if she did not? who will speak for me?’
defending mal oretsev on the internet isn't enough i need a gun
I disagree with this tag honestly. We call Mal toxic because he is. He has toxic masculinity. He got mad at Alina because she flinched. Like the girl is traumatised?
And before you make the "the darkling is abusive excuse" I know. He is. He is much worse than Mal. But the fact he is worse does not erase Mal's flaws.
Literally every thing about Mal that could be considered as toxic he apologized for to Alina and then continued to change his behavior. Did you miss the entirety of Ruin and Rising where he kept supporting Alina?? Where he was ready to let her go so she could be queen??? Character development exists and claiming Mal is still toxic is just erasing his entire journey throughout the trilogy. You can't just focus on the few bad things he has done when that happened in a small part of the story.
Also when Alina flinched away from Mal when he tried to kiss her, he thought he was rejecting her. Don't forget she was basically pushing him away because she didn't want to tell him she saw the Darkling. He took that as her rejecting him, of course he was upset?? He can't read Alina's mind and hating him for that is just ridiculous.