#antialarkling

I am so sorry if you were harmed/traumatised through that RP, and I hope yourself and others who may have been through something like this are doing okay and healing. 💕

I completely agree that fiction affects reality, because fiction is created from aspects of the real life world! This is especially true in the underlying cultural and social laws within a written universe; to be specific, it’s acknowledging the underlying themes of colonialisation, oppression, sexism and peadophelia that exist in both the grishaverse and our reality. By disregarding the influence our real life has on literature and vice versa, it creates a disillusionment that problematic values can be accepted and explored purely because it’s within a fictional sphere (like the rp you mentioned).

To be grishaverse specific, the fans that project onto a/larkling are exploring a relationship that supposedly promises Alina endless power and tops it off with the stereotypical tall, dark and handsome man who bows before his love; which to me is a very surface level understanding of their characters and a basic interpretation of their initial romance. (Basically these fans read a/larkling as any S/JM romance). This disregards the large age gap and the power imbalance within the ship. Yes, I’ve read the arguments that attempt to minimise this (both characters implied to be immortal and age slowly, Alina has the same level of power as Darkles). But this doesn’t change the fact that during the canon plot, Alina is not mature enough (nor old enough she’s 17/18) and has only just discovered her powers to then romance her with someone who is very mature and has had centuries to hone his powers. In that time within the series, there is a very large and canonical gap in age, maturity, life experience and Grisha ability which is never truly aligned in both characters for them to be true equals. Their relationship was set up to toxic and manipulative from the start, because I believe Leigh drew upon real life influence from seeing problematic relationships between teenagers and adult men to then use it as a way of characterising Darkles as villainous and manipulative. He wanted to pursue a relationship with Alina as a way of having her under his control to use, particularly as a weapon to help him achieve his goals of having Grisha be the ruling class within Ravka. He only later says that she could be his equal when he realises that Alina is fighting against him, so it’s simply another angle to attempt to control her. Adult men use forms of manipulation towards young girls to control and use them! Which is why Darkles is written doing that because its literally a part of his villain arc!!