#sab discourse

[greensaplinggrace]

When I found out you actually ship Malina, I was genuinely shocked. How can you support a relationship that's this toxic?

If someone like Mal existed in your real life, would you honestly want to be with him? Someone who doesn't accept you for who you are, who cheats on you right in front of you? Has cheating really become so normalized that people can just brush it off that easily?

Wasn't Mal the one who cheated and then acted like he was the wronged party afterward? Do you actually enjoy the fact that Alina has no confidence around him? That she never feels like she can truly be herself?

I think you've confused this with Darklina, because it's actually around Mal that Alina is constantly denying who she is, not around the Darkling.

Honestly, I can't expect logical arguments from someone who keeps defending toxic relationships and doesn't seem to care how each of these three men actually treated Alina. Your logic works well when discussing the Grisha, but when it comes to toxic relationships like Malina, it just goes completely out the window.

"They always find their way back to each other no matter what." Really? That's supposed to be romantic? It's honestly laughable. As if Mal is such a mature, understanding person. As if he didn't prefer the old Alina the one who was powerless, insecure, dependent, and lacked confidence.

Or maybe you were fooled by the third book into thinking Mal is suddenly a good person just because he was willing to change for Alina.

I genuinely can't respect this relationship. In fact, I honestly think that if Alina hadn't caught Mal kissing Zoya, he absolutely would've ended up sleeping with Zoya.

I cannot understand how you can be a Darklina fan while also defending Malina. Malina was an incredibly toxic relationship, yet you dismiss all of that as if it's no big deal

Man, I don't know where you get off thinking I defend either one of these relationships. I don't know if you're new here or something but I'm a big supporter of Alina killing the Darkling and Malina being dangerously co-dependent. Things that would be terrible indictments of both relationships in the real world. It's called having taste.

Malina was an incredibly toxic relationship, yet you dismiss all of that as if it's no big deal

Why would I dismiss the toxicity when I can make sweet love to it instead. If I had my way, Alina would be butchering both Mal and the Darkling's corpses after killing them both personally to wear their bones, and that to me would be the height of romance.

[sayruq]

it's weird how people call show malina co-dependent because they're really not. alina wanted to cross the fold with mal because people die in there, mal's parents died in there and the night before, he talked to alina about the trauma he has about the fold. he wasn't even supposed to cross, as far as the both of them knew, their units were going together and all of a sudden mal was picked to be one of the people crossing to the fold. mal surviving the crossing was a matter of chance and since the two of them survived the orphanage together, alina probably felt out of panic that they could survive the fold together. she didn't know that one of the cartographers was going to light a lamp. idk maybe it’s me but if best friend was crossing a deadly storm, i too wouldn’t act rationally.

then afterwards, alina taken to the darkling's tent and forced to show her powers while mal was being tended to for the serious injuries he sustained. the next thing both he and alina knew, she being dragged into a carriage ostensibly for her own safety but it looks like a kidnapping. neither of them are given much of an explanation afterwards. i'm sorry but if my oldest friend was dragged off to who knows where, i would be out of my mind with worry. mal trying his best to get to her isn't a sign of an unhealthy attachment, it's what you'd expect from someone whose best friend was taken away seemingly by force. alina and mal writing to each other was also expected. they're the only people they have.

the closest thing to co-dependency is alina cutting her hand so the grisha test failed but the whole grisha testing children and then taking them away from everyone they knew so they could be taken to the little palace, trained to be soldiers in an unwinnable war is far more creepy. i don't know, maybe it's me but if i was that age and an orphan, i also wouldn't want to be separated from the only person i had left esp in a country that hates people like me.

it's absolutely weird that this fandom decided that a friendship between 2 asian orphans is something alina has to outgrow off esp when alina and mal weren't the ones who made the decision to stick with each other, it's the racist and hostile country they were living in that isolated them from the other kids. i do have my own criticisms of the way the characters were written but i really don't like the things people say about mal and alina's relationship.

[poppykru]

Honestly I'm confused about Leigh saying that SaB, the story of a ordinary girl realising she is powerful and special, helped her when she was in a bad place. Because the empowerment in the story is conveyed through Alina's power. Her wondrous beautiful power that gives her strength, through which she gains agency and that pushes hera to grow. But then her power is written as a corruption? And Alina is punished for liking it, for wanting it? How did that empower her?

[firelxdykatara]

Can we please talk about how awful both the Shadow and Bone production crew and the fandom are? The brown-faced stunt model and the "Danielle is not plus-sized (enough)" discourse are sucking out my life force 😓😓😓😓

GOD, i’ve seen so much and im honestly So Tired

like, first of all, how the FUCK did anyone in the production team think that was remotely ok? there wasn’t a south asian stunt actress ANYWHERE they could have used instead of literally painting a white woman brown??? like jfc, netflix, what the fuck. someone genuinely screwed the pooch there, and they need to own it, promise to do better, and fucking stick to it. amita suman deserves so much better.

(but also, the fandom needs to stop literally campaigning for the show to be canceled rather than for the execs to own up to and fix their monumental fuck-ups. wanting to take away jobs from the main cast--many of whom are poc, and i know that amita in particular has talked about how huge it is getting to play such a major role in a break-out fantasy series like this--is not the answer. make netflix own up to and fix where it fucked up, but stop trying to get the show canceled as if that’ll achieve anything but put a bunch of actors of color out of work.

ALSO ALSO, i’ve heard that apparently people are going after amita over this??? and like, what the hell??? she’s an actress, she’s a young woman of color, she has no power over the casting decisions or stunt coordination, leave her alone oh my god. it’s entirely possible that she’s on some sort of censure and can’t speak out about the production issues while the show is ongoing, but even if that’s not the case, it is not her job to fix racism in the entertainment industry. it’s fine for fans to be holding netflix and the execs involved with the show accountable, but the actors are literally on the bottom rung of the ladder in terms of who can actually make those changes, and attacking a young south asian woman for decisions made way over her head is SUPREMELY fucked up.)

and the discourse surrounding danielle is just... awful. does it suck that leigh only confirmed nina was plus-sized outside of the books? it absolutely does. does that mean danielle should be shamed for the role she’s taken (which she does wonders with), a role which women with her body type rarely get to see on screen? absolutely not. i know that as a bi woman with what i guess would be termed a ‘mid-sized’ body type (i have big hips, big thighs, big chest, it’s hard as hell to find shirts or pants that fit right, i’ve spent most of my adult life thinking of myself as fat because i have tummy pudge and no thigh gap and modern beauty standards make anything bigger than Twig Skinny out to be fat), i was able to see myself in nina, and danielle encapsulated that almost perfectly. (im considerably taller, but calahan would still tower over me, their height difference is amazing.)

again, yes, it sucks that leigh confirmed that nina was a fat girl on her twitter without making it explicit in the books or ensuring it was portrayed in official art of the series, but that isn’t danielle’s fault, and it also isn’t the fault of fans who envisioned her differently, either. most casual readers/viewers aren’t gonna know what the author said on her personal twitter two years ago, and considering leigh is an exec producer and involved with the casting process, it’s even less likely that they’re going to think there was an issue with danielle’s casting. if she was good enough for leigh’s vision of the character, then it’s absolutely not fair to blame her for that, or the fans who pictured nina similarly. it’s certainly not ok to attack her for it, jfc.

anyway, there’s been awfulness from all sides recently and it is genuinely exhausting, im so sorry.

[greensaplinggrace]

“Character A didn’t love Character B because they hurt them” discourse is truly terrible because it assigns a moral value to love that simply does not exist. love doesn’t actually mean anything about someone’s character. it doesn’t make someone’s actions toward another any better or any worse, it doesn’t prevent atrocities, and it doesn’t prevent abuse.

love is a worthless emotion when it comes to morals because it simply holds no bearing on them. true love doesn’t exist. there is no better or more pure version of love. in the end love doesn’t mean anything. it’s a non-emotion. it’s the child of passion and affection and dedication. doing something bad doesn’t preclude a feeling of love, because a lack of love isn’t a requirement for immoral actions, and morality isn’t a requirement for feeling love.

[greensaplinggrace]

yeah you know what? I'm going to get into this. "don't humanize villains"/"this abuser is a monster" is some of the worst character discourse in fandom. abusers are not other. abusers are not always easy to recognize. othering someone who's done terrible things from humanity is an arrogant, poisonous idea.

that is a person who is doing those things, and you want so badly to be unable to fall into such patterns of harm and abuse that you will force that person into another category of species altogether, and in so doing you spare yourself from introspection and you give yourself a pretty little pedestal to stand on and you shame everybody who fell for a red flag that is surely so easy to recognize. and you give into prejudice you assign moral values to attributes outside of yourself and you think you are so above doing harm that you could never act in such a way, even as it is a capability within all of us to do so.

get off your self righteous high horse for a moment and use your fucking brain. I'm sick of people in fandom claiming to be the most moral members that are the "only people willing to discuss this" and then every statement out of their mouth is harmful and pervasive word vomit.

[greensaplinggrace]

alina starkov i am so sorry that no one understands your character. i'm sorry that you have been reduced to the fandom's morality pony at the sake of your real personality and your depth. i'm sorry that they don't understand that you existed as a person outside of the men in your life, and that your relationship with your trauma was complicated and ugly and understandable. i'm sorry they didn't love you for this anyway.

i'm sorry they don't understand the metaphor of the sunlight in your soul representing your self discovery and growing ability to accept yourself - that every scene where you long so desperately to know yourself and then glow when you finally do is cast in darkness by those who would rather you starve yourself in the name of conformity than eat healthily at the table of self love.

i'm sorry that they didn't love you enough to see how much losing your light hurt you and i'm sorry that they didn't want you to have a happy ending that you truly wanted - one where you could be all of yourself without shame or borders. i'm sorry their love for you was so performative that it stripped you of everything you are, that it left you wanting and shamed and filled with grief. i'm so so sorry.

[greensaplinggrace]

absolutely fascinated by people saying the darkling committed genocide. is this the result of them not reading the books or is this the result of stringent moral policing in fandom spaces defining how people interpret media online? or perhaps is this the result of said moral policing creating a feedback loop of misinformation for those that don't remember the books too well?