the tracker.

this is an independent and private roleplay blog for  malyen oretsev  from the  grishav.erse  novels. portrayal will be primarily based on the books and some very light show influences,  with the contribution of my own headcanons.  transformed by eza,   25,   they/them.

this blog will contain spoilers for the novels. i tag everything ‘grishaverse spoilers’ along with the book it corresponds to if you want to blacklist that.

carrd.   memes.

for now, mal is going to be moved over to my multi : @fateviled.

               he stares,  none to impressed with the other.  finally,  after a long beat of silence,  mal’s arms cross over his chest.   ❝  that looks a little too big to be a complaint box. ❞   tone dry as the desert.  saints,  it was like brekker’s crew couldn’t take an ounce of criticism.  all he’d said was that kaz be a little more receptive to his client’s ideas,  and maybe put his scowl away for long enough to hold a conversation,  and maybe—  okay,  fine.  he can see where he’s pushing it.  mal rolls his eyes,  looking away.   ❝  fine,  fine.  i get it.  no questioning the ‘experts.’  though you have to admit,  your technique lacks some finesse. ❞

It feels strange to say considering I was expecting the opposite when anticipating the new season, but I didn’t hate the direction that they took his character in. A lot of the other characters were changed to fit the narrative, but I feel like at their core book Mal and show Mal are very much the same with some parts omitted for the sake of the storyline.

But there still was a lot omitted and changed that left much to be desired. Ultimately, show Mal is the “best” version of him. Show Mal was catering to the people who hated him in the books, and for that, he was stripped of all of the struggles he faced and the pain and instead reduced to one thing: the simply happy ending for Alina, the obvious choice, the perfect endgame love interest. Is this what Mal was always meant to be on the surface regardless of portrayal? Yes. Does it work for the direction the show was going? Yeah, sure.

So, I didn't hate it. If anything, it feels like he was one of the least disrespected characters, and Archie gave it his all.

But here's the thing:

If you're going to entirely change a character's ending, you have to have some force driving behind that besides one randomly dropped line late in the game about him thinking "like Sturmhond." Because stripping him of characteristics that don't pertain to his relationship with Alina (like showing that he craves freedom, like letting us see how comfortable he is at sea and around people and him laughing and joking and being free) just doesn't work when you've made a character whose entire personality is Alina. Am I supposed to feel happy for Mal to have gained that freedom when at the same time it feels like he's lost everything, has lost everything? He's grieving that piece of himself that died, and now he's losing Alina too. Why don't I feel like he's getting something back?

And the running gag of "don't touch that" when he's on the ship, subjecting him to playing a character but given no control of the ship, just doesn't work. The humor loses all meaning when you feel like he's not suited for this. One scene of him being explained how being a pirate works, of being trained, of talking to the crew of the Volkvolny would have made a difference.

That's not to say I didn't like the ending! It worked for him, for who he is in this story! He's been given the chance to have agency and find a purpose beyond being the love interest, the promise of having some complexity that was taken from him to rush the narrative along. It just very much feels like, with everything they did in the season, his character went from Point A to Point B without much thought of what happened between those two. Isn't it supposed to be about the journey, the adventure?

I'm not going to discuss the way in which he was brought back. As much as I love the idea of "comes back wrong," if s3 happened did ANYTHING to him they would not be safe from these hands. It's a good concept, and probably makes more sense than the book's resurrection, but right now I don't like it. He has been a puppet to his bloodline and merzost for long enough, don't make it worse. (But also, if merzost brought him back, why did he still lose his amplifier powers? It feels like they just wanted him to lose something.)

Regarding the revelation of him being the Firebird — it worked well, but was a little too in-your-face about it. The entire appeal for me is that you aren't supposed to know, Mal is supposed to be Just Some Guy Who's Really Good At Tracking until he's the key to everything. But from the moment the season started, everyone was questioning why he knew what he did. It lost some of the gut-wrenching realization of what would have to happen to him, to see the pieces fit together so early on.