#antidarklina

[snickering-couch-gremlin]

Shadow and Bone season 1 timeline (not to scale). First time I watched the show, it felt like Alina was only at the Little Palace a very short time - mostly because the Crow's story was happening later but being shown at the same time as Alina's story.

[ironwingedhawk]

Are the d*rkling fans going to hate on Ben now?

[dylanobrienisbatman]

Lets be real tho, this little rant was very good and I'm not gonna delete it just because thats not what the anon was actually tlaking about! So, to anyone who thinks that without Mal, alina would have ended up WITH the darkling (not LIKE him, which is what my anon actually said... again... sorry!!!), this is for you!

..... okay but... how does that translate to her ending up with the man who abused her, manipulated her, groomed her, enslaved her, sexually assaulted her, tried to kill or did kill many of the people she loves, sold a dear friend of hers into sexual slavery, killed her mother figure in front of her and made her look at her dead body (uhhh joffrey parallels much?), and literally only viewed her as a source of power for himself?

Also, the reason she wasn't lonely in the orphanage was because she was friends with Mal. It's made pretty clear that he was basically her only friend growing up. She never mentions any other kids at the orphanage that she was close with, she never remembers any other kids from the orphanage as companions or friends, they repeat over and over that it was always just the two of them against the world.

And lets not forget, the reason she didn't end up being sent to the little palace when she was like 12 or younger was because of Mal. She hid her powers from the Grisha testers so that she could stay with him. If he hadn't been there, they would have discovered her as the sun summoner when she was a little girl, and they would have sent her to the palace. Imagine the Darkling with total and complete control over a 12 year old Alina? He would have had so much more power over her, it would have be so easy for him to manipulate her and groom her into being under his control. He would have enslaved her as a little girl and used her to destroy the world in his image, and he would have succeeded. Mal being there saved not only Alina from being sent into the Darkling's clutches as a pre-teen, but also saved the whole fucking world!!!

Whether or not Mal was around, Alina would have never, ever ended up with the Darkling. He never loved her, he was never romantically attracted to her. He is her ABUSER!!!!!! Everything he ever did and said to get her to believe he was on her side was in furtherance of his abuse of her. He spent every single second they were together lying to her, manipulating her, invading her privacy, stealing from her (her letters AND Mal's letters, and in the show, her journal and her drawings), and grooming her. If Mal wasn't around, it would have just meant there was nobody around who cared enough about Alina to protect her from a 500 year old shadow douche bag who wanted nothing more than to control her power for his own personal gain.

So, no. If there was no Mal, she wouldn't have ended up with the Darkling. She would have ended up as his slave at 12 years old instead of being able to withstand his manipulation and abuse long enough to escape him and fight back. She would have ended up just like Zoya, a tool in his arsenal who has been abused by him to the point where the idea of loosing his favour turned her cruel, who didn't see what kind of a monster he was until he killed her family without a care in the world. Or worse, she could have ended up like Genya, sold and abused for the Darkling's personal gain because he saw her as nothing more than a trinket in his possession to use at his own discretion. Without Mal, the Darkling gets Alina's power, he gets to destroy everything in his path and kill anyone who stands against him. Without Mal, the Darkling wins. Without Mal, Alina ends up as nothing more than a slave.

[psychic-cherry]

it’s really confusing to me how people say that Malina was pushed a lot in the show adaptation like do y’all not realize it’s their story?? The books revolve around them ofc the tv show is too😭

[lovebecomeshim]

Netflix trying to make something of dark!ina with the consent thing when 1) that’s not the characterization we get in the book, and 2) it’s not consent if the person deliberately withholds information that (they know) would otherwise make the other person say no.

[yiangchen]

i’m sorry, but d/arklinas being so pressed about malina and the meadow is sending me rn

[imruination]

Personally I am a huge fan of the cinematography of that scene where the darkling and Alina are standing on opposite sides of the doorway. Both of them are covered in shadow t o g e t h e r for a moment, but then Alina steps away. She manages to leave the darkness and step back into the light, while the darkling never will. She leaves the thrall of power and turns away from it, while the darkling drowns in it. ANYWAYS I love storytelling.

[krugecrow]

honestly this darklina thing is lowkey giving me flashbacks to s*baci*l (a ship between a centuries old demon and a literal 13yo child) that i was into when i was 13~16 and it fucked me up So Bad; like i wrote rp with people who were adults and KNEW i was a minor and it took me so long to realize how wrong it was and is... like, shit like this has Actual Real Life Consequences and minors who grow up thinking this shit is normal are gonna get really hurt in the long run thanks to gross adults

I am so sorry if you were harmed/traumatised through that RP, and I hope yourself and others who may have been through something like this are doing okay and healing. 💕

I completely agree that fiction affects reality, because fiction is created from aspects of the real life world! This is especially true in the underlying cultural and social laws within a written universe; to be specific, it’s acknowledging the underlying themes of colonialisation, oppression, sexism and peadophelia that exist in both the grishaverse and our reality. By disregarding the influence our real life has on literature and vice versa, it creates a disillusionment that problematic values can be accepted and explored purely because it’s within a fictional sphere (like the rp you mentioned).

To be grishaverse specific, the fans that project onto a/larkling are exploring a relationship that supposedly promises Alina endless power and tops it off with the stereotypical tall, dark and handsome man who bows before his love; which to me is a very surface level understanding of their characters and a basic interpretation of their initial romance. (Basically these fans read a/larkling as any S/JM romance). This disregards the large age gap and the power imbalance within the ship. Yes, I’ve read the arguments that attempt to minimise this (both characters implied to be immortal and age slowly, Alina has the same level of power as Darkles). But this doesn’t change the fact that during the canon plot, Alina is not mature enough (nor old enough she’s 17/18) and has only just discovered her powers to then romance her with someone who is very mature and has had centuries to hone his powers. In that time within the series, there is a very large and canonical gap in age, maturity, life experience and Grisha ability which is never truly aligned in both characters for them to be true equals. Their relationship was set up to toxic and manipulative from the start, because I believe Leigh drew upon real life influence from seeing problematic relationships between teenagers and adult men to then use it as a way of characterising Darkles as villainous and manipulative. He wanted to pursue a relationship with Alina as a way of having her under his control to use, particularly as a weapon to help him achieve his goals of having Grisha be the ruling class within Ravka. He only later says that she could be his equal when he realises that Alina is fighting against him, so it’s simply another angle to attempt to control her. Adult men use forms of manipulation towards young girls to control and use them! Which is why Darkles is written doing that because its literally a part of his villain arc!!

For adult and minor interactions based around these kinds of ships/topics, it’s important for fandom to recognise that adults don’t get to decide if something is/isn’t harmful to minors if the minors themselves are saying it! Who knows what kinds of content minors are comfortable with than the minors themselves! The minors in fandom spaces (especially grishaverse) generally have a good comprehension of the content and if it’s harmful to them, so their opinions can be trusted and should be taken seriously! I know there is the universal concept that adults are ‘wiser’ than minors, but being an adult doesn’t mean they have superior comprehension and ideals. Complementary to this idea is that people don’t tend to understand a group’s experiences if they are not experiencing that facet of the world from that group’s perspective themselves. An adult won’t understand why a/larkling and other paedophelia based ships make minors uncomfortable, unless they have lived it or think critically about it and listen to minor’s voices.