obie's corner

We don't have any textual evidence that the Darkling was that root. What we have is the intrinsic view of the narrative from the heroes, which is in of itself heavily biased.

If anything, we have a continuous cycle of being proven that the Darkling was right to expect the worst of the Otkazat'sya. Because it only took three-something years of the Shadow Fold and the Darkling being gone for the Grisha to face the worst of humankind.

Another point I would like to raise while we're at it, is this perspective of some short-sighted readers that "the Darkling had gone about it the wrong way."

As if turning the other cheek had stopped wars at any time in history? It also implies that he had only gone about it in a violent, destructive way.

Did we honestly read the same books? He had talked multiple times about knowing humanity. About knowing that peace is only a pitstop in the unending cycle of war, not a destination. Peace had never been acquired indefinitely. The only way you will understand that about humanity is if you had once gone about it the "right" way, the undestructive, heavily naive way.

No amount of kindness has ever and will ever kill bigotry.

Tempting the dragon

Then I want a moment where the IC are hating on Lucien for ignoring Feyre's negative emotional state in ACOMAF, to which Lucien informs them that Nesta is in an even worse emotional state in HOFAS and all of them, including her mate, are blissfully ignorant to it. The IC can then start explaining how they are most certainly not Tamlin 2.0 because Nesta deserves her mistreatment because, you know, she just saved all worlds from the threat of the Asteri and she's lucky they didn't execute her for such a thing.

This is Lucien Vanserra we are talking about!!

The same Lucien that was raised by Beron, Raised by Eris & the rest of his brothers…the same Lucien that lived with Tamlin, the same Lucien who endured many forms of abuse. The same Lucien that has spent his entire life handling difficult people & situations both by being a son of The Autumn court & being Tamlin’s emissary! The same Lucien that has been nothing but kind & respectful of Elain, the same Lucien that hasn’t forced a mate bond onto Elain…like Cassian.

the bat boys are loyal to rhys because they've been together 500 years and rhys "saved them" his mother did

they all must be loyal to feyre because she's rhys' mate

it's wrong of lucien to remain loyal to tamlin despite all the time they spent together and the ways tamlin helped lucien

The whole Grishaverse is basically one long "Will anyone think of poor bigots?" plea.

It's hard for them, you know! Those Grisha are damn witches, so poor bigots can't even hurl abuse at them without fear of being cursed! They have to walk on eggshells every time they feel the need to scream "dirty bloodletter" at a Grisha passing by! In addition to that, Grisha have the audacity to be naturally healthier and better-looking than poor ordinary people, which makes our virtuous heroine go green with holy righteous envy.

How dare those dirty demons isolate themselves from nice ordinary people who want to burn them at the stake? They live in the palace! They have nice things, which they do not want to share with their bigoted compatriots for some unexplicable reason. They should be bending themselves backward to please the oppressive majority, and instead they act like standoffish snobs and leave poor otkazats'ya no choice other than to oppress them further! That's why our righteous heroine is going to fix that horrific injustice and make sure that no bigot is left without a bunch of Grisha goodies! She is not even above looting corpses for that; that's how determined she is to provide for her fellow chauvinists!

And it's not like otkazatsya hate Grisha for nothing! Five centuries ago one of those damn evil demons created a big and scary shadowy wall, which is a totally valid excuse to hate all Grisha forever! Instead of adapting to their new landscape, Ravkans could only sit on their asses and shake with impotent rage towards the man who was officially dead when their great-great-great-grandparents weren't even born. I guess it's fair to assume that Ravkans do not own umbrellas; they just shake their fists at the sky when it rains and curse the name of whoever invented precipitation.

And poor Mal! Everyone is hating on him, and nobody wants to understand that he just learned that his friend belongs to a minority he considers disgusting and unnatural! Can you imagine how difficult it is for him to have his bigotry triggered in such a brutal way? Besides, in the end he magnanimously accepted Alina's power! Sure, the power was later removed anyway not to traumatize the poor boy further and give him a powerless unassuming wife he always wanted, but he was ready to tolerate that horrible grishaness in his girlfriend, and nobody appreciated his heroism!

And can you imagine, after centuries of genocide, those cursed Grisha decided to use violence! Once again, poor otkazats'ya had no other option but to take their righteous fury out on all Grisha regardless of their participation in the violent act. That's totally understandable; poor babies are scared and confused; they thought violence was their prerogative! Whoever told the victims of persecution they can fight back? That should be illegal. Violence is not the answer, which is why all Grisha who use violent methods should be killed! Why couldn't they just explain to otkazats'ya that they are nice people and want no harm? That always works so well with marginalized minorities! Because people who form genocidal cults and built whole systems on oppression and subjugation are just poor scared kids who need to be reassured that the monster under their bed is not real.

The right way for the oppressed to fight for their rights is obviously to wait until a privileged royal spawn feels the urge to play a white savior and hands them a bunch of empty promises. And then a village idiot whose only value is the light shining out of her ass (and even for that impressive feat she had to skulk around the country and kill a few magical animals) will appoint her equally unqualified friends to represent the interests of the oppressed minority. This is the only way!

why not genya??? the spy, the tactician, the person willing to sacrifice herself for the good of her people???

zoya has literally NOTHING going on in her favour expect this nebulous power, but unlike alina & aleksander, she wasn’t born with it, and she DEFINITELY didn’t earn it

and politically, i cannot stress how much of a difference it makes, that aleksander had to fight for and claw every inch of power he’s ever had from the hands of his opressors while zoya is handed everything just like that on a silver platter

Alina definitely assumes Zoya would rule diplomatically because she is a saint.

Aleksander has the patience of a saint.

Zoya has the patience of a ticking time bomb.

And this everyone, is why we don’t make young people/living saints head monarchs straight up

Honestly, why doesn’t Juris ask her to think logically than act on impulse?

This would have been a more interesting scene if Sasha had spoken of someone Juris had loved and Zoya didn’t understand her own emotional reaction.

It was always very interesting on Deep Space Nine, when Jadzia Dax (a humanoid with an immortal symbiote) had to navigate the feelings and memories of previous hosts.

Zoya being overwhelmed by Juris’ much older and dominant presence would have been an actually interesting plotline.

Imagine a similar scene, but sparked by the name of a different Grisha. And at the end of it Aleksander smirks and says, “Hello, old friend” because he knows he is speaking with Juris rather than Zoya.

That’s how I see Zoya every time she opens her mouth in her righteous outrage:

How and why he created the Shadow Fold

How he created the Second Army and the Little Palace and how they actually function

What he has been up to for literal centuries

What his actual political and ideological views are and how he envisioned the future for Ravka and Grisha.

What I learned about the Darkling from the books instead:

The color of his eyes. They are grey, which is stated about 250 times in case someone is still not sure what color grey looks like.

the state of his hair at any given point in time.

He has a bEaUtIfUl face. Yes, it's also repeated 250 times in case you suddenly forget that he is handsome.

His laugh sounds sexy

His bare chest is irresistibly hawt

The books are cursed with a shallow, ignorant protagonist who keeps focusing on wrong things.

No, being sexually attracted to a "bad" guy and berating herself for it doesn't make the heroine complex. Moral complexity would require her to actually engage with the political climate around her, consider the actions of her enemies and allies and their impact on objective reality instead of how they make her feel, and, most importantly, reflect on her own choices rather than judging someone else's. Emotional complexity would require her to be torn between her lingering attachment and empathy for the antagonist and her judgment of his methods and actions. The closest she gets to empathizing with him is noticing that he sometimes looks "like a boy," which is purely visual.

Salivating over the guy's chest and feeling bad because of it doesn't make her a nuanced and morally complex protagonist. It makes her a horny prude.

Sexual frustration doesn't equal complexity. Sexual attraction doesn't have anything to do with morals—it's morally neutral. It's just hormones. The fact that Alina was tempted by his body is not a moral failure. Being attracted to a handsome man is one of the things she shouldn't feel guilty about. She'd do better if she felt guilty for her bigotry; her supporting rapists, oppressors, and various hateful violent bigots; her committing a mass murder and other war crimes; or her tendency to abandon everyone and care only about herself and her dishrag friend, or at least for being a cunt towards everyone who is not the said dishrag friend.

Nina: “Thank you. Ravka? Or Kirigan? It didn’t take him destroying a city for me to question my loyalty.”

Another hilarious exchange! 

You’re so right, Nina! Ravka doesn’t give a flying fuck about Grisha kidnapped by Western separatists, Kirgan does. He even sent one of his best people to look for you!

You didn’t need destruction to change your loyalties, only a good dick from a guy, who hunts and imports your kind to be experimented on, before they’re used as firewood.

The way he devalues the heroine and makes her feel small and worthless.

The way he cannot stand her being happy and confident without him.

The way he makes demeaning, offensive comments about her.

The way he ignores her misery and obviously thrives when she is weak and helpless.

The way he gets jealous and aggressive every time she looks at another man.

The way he tries to control her and speaks over her, not letting her make her own decisions.

The way he tries to blame her for his wrongdoings.

The way he leaves her alone in the state of obvious distress because he is too preoccupied with his bruised ego.

The way he resents her being more powerful and important than him and makes ugly scenes every time she doesn't pay him enough attention.

The way she feels guilty and ashamed and starts second-guessing herself when he is in a bad mood.

The way he guilt-trips her and manipulates her into feeling sorry for him.

The way he conditioned her to believe that her self-worth depends on him and her happiness is impossible without his presence.

The way he claims he only wants what's best for her, which makes his abuse even more insidious.

The way she never realizes what damage he's done and keeps doing to her because she believes she can trust him.

The way he gets everything he wants in the end: he is a rich, handsome, popular guy, and she is his nameless, quiet, unassuming, socially ostracized wife.

The way their relationship mimics a toxic, emotionally abusive relationship with eerie accuracy.

He is not evil in an appealing, sexy, fantasy-villain way. He doesn't need a big black cloak, shadow magic, or world-conquering ambitions. He is vile in the most mundane, suffocatingly mediocre sense of this world.

A decent tyrant would have made them terrified to even think poorly of Grisha.