is this your villain

Alina stared at the icicles, hanging from the eaves like great daggers made of ice, like they personally offended her.

It was a distinctly adorable look on her.

"Do you wish them gone?" he asked softly, with only just a tiny bit of a teasing edge in his voice. "You only have to say, although I'd love to hear the reason why you find them so enraging."

"No, they don't bother me. Not really." She shivered, almost as if trying to get rid of something unpleasant stuck to her skin. "They're just… bringing up some memories."

Aleksander wasn't so sure if he wanted to know what kind of memories—when brought up like this, they usually were something abhorrent about the orphanage—, yet he found himself saying, "Care to share them with me?"

"It's not that big of a deal, really," she shrugged. "It's just that the orphanage used to get great big icicles like these, and Ana Kuya always fretted that they'd fall on someone. So one year, Mal and I had this brilliant idea of getting rid of them—we thought we'd garner some goodwill from her that way. There were always some pebbles around, and he had a slingshot…"

"Oh, no."

"We broke a window." A surprised chuckle erupted from him at her deadpan delivery. "Don't you dare to laugh! I couldn't sit properly for a week."

this got me thinking about the last time i read a fanfic and i just realised that it has been a year since i visited ao3 or more than that. damnnn. why am i losing interest in everything 😭. anyway, here are the ones that i read and loved almost a year ago.

Timeless series by destinies

Start a War & Lone Candles by nymja

A hundred Lifetimes Ago by Insectkin

Alina is vaguely aware of the fact that she should be getting up. That beyond the drawn bed curtains the sun is shining and the Little Palace is getting up, readying for the day—she can even hear the maids bustling around the room—they're not even trying to keep it down. Its only the matter of minutes—seconds—until someone draws the curtains, flooding her with light.

Which is fine. Because she should be getting up. Urgently. Life in the orphanage and the army has taught her what happens to those who don't greet the dawn, alert and fit. (Her bottom still stings when she thinks about it.)

…Only her whole body aches, her head throbs, her stomach is upset, and her mouth feels like it's been stuffed with cotton wool.

In a nutshell: she feels rotten.

Sleeping just a smidge more might not be such a bad idea—slash—such a capital offense, after all.

She wakes again five minutes—or an hour—later, to the curtains being pulled open at last. Light floods in, she hisses—like that bloodsucking monster in that book Nina was showing her—and curls into a ball. The mattress dips, then there's a hand on her hip, urging her to uncurl.

"Here," says a gentle voice, pushing a glass of water under her nose. "Drink this now nicely."

Alina cracks open an eye—Aleksander sounds almost amused, which is a good sign—, then, half-sitting up, takes the glass.

"Thanks," she croaks, gulping down the water. Heaven.

"So…" there is a smile hiding in his voice. "What did you learn from last night?"

She groans. "That vodka is evil and that you never, ever get into a drinking contest with David."

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Eight years after Alina’s coven elders trapped wolf shifter Aleksander in his wolf form, she plans to restore the man she loves and give their daughter her father.

If anyone deserved to become an alcoholic and somewhat justify it, it's Alina. That girl was running a disbanded army with no knowledge and experience. And dealt with princes, nobles, creepy monks and her followers who formed a cult. All while the Darkling followed her around through the tether and annoyed her for attention.

I'm not endorsing addictions and harmful behaviors, but maybe taking a swing from Nikolai's brandy in the evening would stop Alina from running away in the city in her pajamas and attempting suicide.

But Mal gets a pass because "he felt trapped" in the palace? Because he's a manly man who needs to fight and sleep in the dirt and make out with a different woman every day. But if Alina had a drink or fantasized about a hot general, it would ruin the "perfect goodness and sunshine from the pure heart" image the narrative shoves in our faces?

or has for some reason decided not to mention it at all or let anyone else know.

I just found out something insane today. in the new dregs editions that came out for the 10th anniversary, leigh bardugo has removed any and all mention of the crows being teenagers, cut out whole sentences and completely changed quotes that are classic and very well known by fans of the six of crows duology. she’s replaced any mention of words like ‘children’ ‘boy’ ‘girl’ and ‘kids’ with ‘man’ ‘woman’ ‘grown’ etc

this is concerning, bewildering and just feels wrong for so many reasons. but besides the obvious —which is that the six protagonists of the duology being young is essential to many aspects of the plot, seeing as their world weariness and competence is a result of their experiences as children and survivors who are victims of their environment—besides even that, editing a piece of literature that’s been published and on shelves for 10 years is objectively not a good idea at all, and doesn’t at all take into account the new contexts and connotations the new wording brings.

above is an example of the original scene we know verses the new version. lots of it has changed, namely their ages, but the sentence at the end in matthas' pov doesn't even sound like him at all. her writing quality has declined noticeably and she sounds like she wrote that sentence in a rush. it makes no sense, and it's not something matthias, who knows practically nothing about the barrel, would be thinking.

and not to mention the famous line 'brekker's eyes were ancient, but he couldn't be any older then matthias' — cut out of the book completely. I do wonder what impact, effect and influence these changes will have on new readers.

this is another example. such a classic line and they cut it completely.

the entire books are like this. inej saying kaz looking seventeen is changed to kaz looking like someone's apprentice. the boy of the barrel changed to man. criminal prodigy changed to just mastermind. inej described as a woman in place of a sixteen year old girl. wylan changed from boy to young man. full scenes cut. 'jesper is zemeni but don't hold it against him' changed to ‘don’t let him wax sentimental about it’ which sounds way worse then the original.

and I don't actually own the new copies of these books, my best friend was looking at them in a bookstore and that's when we first noticed all of the changes. so I truly have no idea what else could possibly be changed besides the things I noticed as I cannot look at them for reference - the crow's physical appearance, more of the plot, other famous scenes just being cut completely, etc. if nothing else has changed, then it’s still way too much and massively changes core aspects of the books. but I do wonder. if you own the dregs special editions, I suggest looking for similar differences. I might have to write examples to express how messed up the new connotations are.

leigh now implies that jesper, an adult black man, made the right choice by handing over his share from his job to his white father to keep for you, as he cannot control himself and isn't ready to receive his own funds, as he is a mindless gambler. this is extremely different to a reckless irresponsible teenager grieving his mother and making stupid mistakes, and then deciding to make better decisions in the future with help from his parent. I'm sure you can see without me spelling it out how awful, racist and problematic the new context of jesper being a grown man makes this situation sound.

another example is matthias' childhood centrally seeing him be groomed, manipulated and indoctrinated by a nazi coded witch hunting organisation that targets grisha, an oppressed community, with the intention of torturing, burning, hanging, raping and eradicating them from the world

matthias is just turning 18 when he meets nina. he has not yet done any of these terrible things himself. he is fresh out of training and still basically a child. his views are first challenged, and he eventually breaks out of the brainwashing and mental manipulation that has been taught and instilled in him with repetition. it's not an excuse, but it's more understandable. matthias, now a grown man apparently way older then 18, has no excuse for these bigoted views as he is way more mature, has way more experience, and would have had to have done these horrific things to grisha at some point.

it feels like some sort of fever dream that six of crows was edited and re published so that these famous teenage characters (who were first written so obviously— in dialogue, actions, pov, - as teenagers) and their criminal prodigy leader were made into poorly written adults. I can put into words how much this has deeply bothered and distressed me and many other readers I've spoken to.

it's such an odd choice and makes me think it was done to soften the backlash the shadow and bone adaption received from some fans for aging up the characters in the first place.

I cannot stress this enough- leigh bardugo would edit iconic lines and change core aspects of her characters that have been around for 10 years to justify a cancelled netflix adaption of these incredibly popular and well loved books. it's odd and uncomfortable.

now, these books mean the world to me, they have quite literally got me through physical, mental and emotional childhood abuse, suicide ideation and self harm, the everyday ableism and oppression, chronic pain and disability experience, severe depression and anxiety, absolute hopelessness, work and life, etc) but the sheer absurdity of this all just outmatches my distress that it happened. it feels like some sort of hallucination becasue it's lowkey just insane. she never even mentioned she was going to do something like this?

there is just no conceivable reason for leigh bardugo to have done this secretly and quietly other then to have stopped people negatively critiquing the show or some other deeply odd notion. and with all of these changes, the new books absolutely are not the 'dregs' editions— the heart of the dregs is the young blood, 'the kids like kaz who he had brought in a organised, who worked the hardest and took the worst jobs'