Yasmine0408

nsfw | professor Tom Riddle! | 💋 ⛓️🖇️🍷🥀🖤 |

other fics | requests | my inspo fic | old blog | Inspired by 2008 movie prom night |

SUMMARY Y/n hooked up with her new defence of the dark arts professor and it all takes a dark turn.

AUTHORS NOTE: Inspired by my old series prom night, and still can't get over it and decided to spice it up with new characters and plot twist endings lol.

ACTUAL WARNING Professor x Student relationship, platonic!matteo x reader, dark arts, obsession, Tom is like 23 while reader is 18 (of age!!), dark!fic, dark! Tom Riddle,

Jessie Mei Li as Alina Starkov

nikolina appreciation week 2021 ♛ day five: fave quote + day seven: fave scene

Nikolina Appreciation Week 2021 ♛ Day 7: Favourite scene // Favourite banter moment

Frankly, let's be honest, she should have ended up with one of the two. (Especially the Darkling, who was literally his symbolic soul mate, as well as its equal)

And if the goal was absolutely for Alina to end up with a good guy, then again, why Mal ?! He is not a good guy ! Nikolai is ! (Damn, he really respected Alina ! It felt so good !)

Where then they should have been a couple of three ! Problem solved like this ! We put Darklina, Nikolina, and Darkolai in agreement like that !

Do I ship all 3 ? Yes quite ! (even if, you can imagine, I still have my preference for Darklina)

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The Lives of Saints (Leigh Bardugo)

The first is an immortal man. He’s ancient from human perspective, but he’s considered to be young and idealistic by other immortals. His life’s mission is to protect a wolrdwide opressed minority, that he belongs to. This ahs been his mission since he was 13 and he’s at least 500 now. He’s their guardian, their patron saint in many ways. He was almost killed for his power by his first friend and vowed to build a world where nobody ever needs to be desperate enough to do that. He’s a character driven by empathy, a strong sense of justice and a wish for world peace, the end of wars and discrimination, and he’ll stop at nothing to achieve that.

The second is an immortal woman. She’s still young, even by human standarts, but she has the potential to live forever. She’s an orphan, who fell in love with her foster brother. She’s a member of an opressed minority, but she’s revered for her powers instead of despised, through no action of her own. She doesn’t care for the opression of the rest of her kind, as it doesn’t affect her. She’s willing to do anything, even kill innocent people, to protect her brother/love interest. She’s immature, self-centered and short-sighted. She has a love-hate relationship with her powers, her desires, her social status and even her life itself. She likes having power and doesn’t think twice about using it for personal gain and satisfaction, but she despises having responsibility and the expectations her position gives her. She’s driven by her paranoia, her codependant and toxic relationship with her brother/love interest and by her internalized prejudice.

Why doesn’t Zoya like Alina? Why is she so mean to her?

I’m not saying everyone has to like the protagonist (I don’t like Alina either), but I don’t really see why Zoya doesn’t. Their mutual dislike makes no sense to me in either show or book.

Maybe it’s because I’m not a fan of overdone and shitty misogynistic tropes (because that’s what their whole “rivalry” ultimately is - a collection of shitty and misogynistic tropes that have been outdated a decade ago).

Especially when, during the “stink” line in both versions, they had zero actual one-on-one interactions.

In the book, Alina hates Zoya because she’s the “pretty and popular girl” that Mal may or may not have banged the night before their Fold trip. It’s 100% based around jealousy on Alina’s side. Jealousy for a guy that, if I remember correctly, she’s mostly over at this point and whom she has a very sibling-like relationship with, mind you.

And Zoya hates Alina in the book because… I don’t actually know. Because Alina takes the spotlight? Because she’s a bully who just enjoys making Alina miserable? There’s no actual reason given for Zoya not liking Alina. Is she jealous or just mean for the sake of being mean?

She hates Alina, because she’s the “Mean Girl” stereotype. That’s probably the real answer.

Unlike in the book, Alina doesn’t really have anything against Zoya until they meet at the Little Palace in the show.

As far as we know, Alina doesn’t know that Zoya was the Grisha who invited Mal to her bed. Their only interactions so far were on the skiff and in the tent after, where Zoya put her head on the line by claiming her to be the Sun Summoner.

(I think I said this before, but I have a headcanon that there have been false “Sun Summoners” before and they haven’t ended well, partly explaining Alina’s reluctance to proclaim herself as such. And it would put Zoya at risk if she was wrong about Alina).

Then, Alina heads off to the Little Palace.

Zoya talks with Mal (and probably realizes he really doesn’t like the Grisha, but that’s a thread for another day). Then, she must head off to the Little Palace shortly after, because she arrives soon after Alina - soon enough to be present at her introduction to the court and not look like she just rode 200+ miles on a horse, anyway.

At which point, she insults Alina.

We’re told it’s because she’s jealous of Alina getting Aleksander’s attention/having the spotlight on her in general, but… is that really enough to call someone a racist slur over?

There’s also the matter of their fight.

In the book, it’s after Alina has been training at the Little Palace for a while and she beat Zoya fair and square, on her third-or-so try doing it, and Zoya blasts her into a wall, because she’s an immature bitch. For all her faults, Alina clearly has the moral highground in the situation. Her reasons for wanting to beat Zoya might have been petty jealousy, but she did it fairly and didn’t injure Zoya.

In the show it’s Alina’s first day of training. Botkin asks her to show of her combat training (because she claims to have some after a flashback to Mal teaching her how not to break her hand when boxing) and she picks Zoya as an opponent, because, you know, Zoya called her a racist slut absolutely unprovoked.

Zoya beats her, repeatedly, then makes an allusion to having slept with Mal (on a sidenote, when did Alina find out Zoya was the one Mal stole from to get her food? Or is this when she finds out). So, Alina gets up and hits her from behind, prompting Zoya to send her into said pile of hay.

After which we get a scene of Alina ranting to Mal about how she feels so alienated at the Little Palace and how being Grisha is so hard.

In this version, both of them come of as kinda awful people. Zoya because she clearly provokes Alina and Alina because she takes the bait and attacks her from behind. Like, Alina still looks a bit better, but the “Woe is me” monologue right after kinda kills that for me.