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Crazy prompt.
The Darkling came out to avenge the grisha after being impresioned in the blight for a thousand years, only to have people telling him now is cool to have powers and that Otkazat'sya are the ones being treated as second class citizens... now Aleksander has to fight for them.
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The whole "Alina is just a teenager" becomes absurd and insulting even if we consider modern,privileged,unpleasant Western teens,lol. As someone who's consumed a lot of content with adolescents(most of it American and with middle-class protagonists),I can say that a big part of those works is about agency,consequence to their actions,relationships and growing pains.
Hi, anon!
Yes! The word "teenager" people use as a shield against any criticism towards their favorite characters must mean something entirely different compared to real-life teenagers. The age of majority in most countries is 18, so 18-19-year-old teenagers ARE legally adults who have all the rights and responsibilities of an adult. They can work, provide for themselves, own and purchase property, start businesses, get married, have children, vote and, should they commit a crime, be tried and judged just like any other adult.
Teenagers that exist in the imagination of Alina, Mal and other teenage characters' fans are helpless, ignorant little babies who should be automatically forgiven for any fuckup (for they don't know what they are doing), lack critical thinking skills, and apparently have "underdeveloped brains," which exempts them from any rules of logic or common sense. They cannot manifest troubling tendencies, addictions, or signs of personality disorders—it's all just teenagehood; it will magically go away as soon as they turn 20.
The most ironic part, of course, is that most fans of the teenage defense are teenagers themselves. Yet they confidently write their posts, argue with other people, and demand respect for their opinions, even though, according to their own logic, they shouldn't have critical thinking skills and the mental capacity to analyze information.
Hey I'm noticing a weird uptick in blogs reposting Grishaverse art without credit. Fan art is made with love and often made freely; the least people can do is give credit otherwise we risk a fandom where people stop making stuff cause it's getting stolen. Bad enough AI is doing it! Let's not encourage this behavior in the human -based community too.
If you're new to Tumblr: reblogging is ok because it leaves the provenance trail back to the artist. Reposting esp without credit is bad!
I swear, people who come up with ridiculous takes like "I don't remember the Grisha plot but the Darkling was soo mean to poor Alina!" , "He tormented her just because she disagreed with him!" and "she chose Mal because she wanted a simple life!" actually read an office romance where a new corporate intern has to choose between her hot but overbearing boss and her childhood friend who wants her to quit her corporate job and help him run a farm in their hometown. And the boss is hella mad at her because she doesn't agree with the thermostat settings he chose and refuses to try his favorite pineapple pizza at the office party.
Fictional pretty boy twink with curly hair: *exists*
The fandom, pointing at them with a trembling finger: TRANS
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Do you think that Bardugo always planned to have Alina lose her powers? If she did, that’s confusing because how can she say that her powers were a metaphor for body autonomy and desire, do the whole shadow and light thing with the Darkling then leave her powerless and a nobody/Mal’s wife?
Hi, anon!
That's a good question. It certainly doesn't look like it was planned from the beginning (let's be honest, there is no aspect in those books that looks like it was well-thought-out or planned)
The ending does look disjointed and thematically inconsistent with the rest of the books. In books 1 and 2, Alina is shown miserable every time she is with Mal. She's repressed, weak, miserable, self-loathing and ashamed of herself. She is genuinely happy to finally "unlock" her power. The only natural, satisfying development from it is Alina accepting her identity as Grisha and cutting off everything that hindered her (cough, Mal, cough). Yet, somehow she does the exact opposite, and we are told it's a good thing. Maybe Bardugo wanted to subvert a coming-of-age trope, but it was a total failure. You can see that even those who claim to like the ending are hella confused because they can't agree on whether Alina didn't want her power at all and gave it up willingly or it was taken away because she was corrupted by power-hunger. The former isn't supported by text, and the latter (s in Alina's supposed corruption) doesn't get a compelling development. Not to mention the fact that if her powers were a metaphor for body autonomy and sexual liberation, taking them away as punishment invites deeply uncomfortable implications. Your body is yours as long as you play by rules? Horrid. The ending was such a mess people's minds refuse to accept it and come up with romanticized confabulations.
Then there is the whole "Mal being the third amplifier" thing. It's completely illogical, because Mal doesn't show any properties of an amplifier. Meanwhile, Aleksander is established to be an amplifier from the very beginning, and it remains completely irrelevant to the plot. It's obvious that a much more elegant solution would be to make Aleksander the third amplifier and to get Alina to kill him. This way, his death would be more meaningful and logical, and if Bardugo had reservations about making Darklina canon, this problem would also be solved. A tragic, bittersweet ending practically writes itself, yet the author vehemently rejects it for the sake of making her favorite sexist blade boy relevant.
I've seen different arguments pointing to the fact the ending was changed: Bardugo's weird change of heart about Darklina, Alina forcing Aleksander to use merzost (an act matching the collar in its invasiveness), Alina telling Mal that she didn't really belong with him and that she would never give up on her power, Alina's odd donkey dream, or Nikolai's initially planned death, so the most logical conclusion is that the change was abrupt and ill-conceived. I've read other Bardugo's books, and it seems like hollow, unsatisfying, incoherent endings are a recurring pattern. In simple words, she has ideas but has no clue how to develop and conclude her plot.
Another lazy Grishaverse argument I keep seeing is "The Darkling is evil because, even though his goals might have been noble, in the end he just wanted power!" Oh no, dearie, should I start clutching my pearls now?
Power is not a goal; power is a means. People want power because it can give them something. Saying "he just wanted power" doesn't tell me anything about his motivation or his moral character. A lot of people want power for different reasons. Only when you outline those reasons and show what they are planning to do with the power can we draw any conclusions. Otherwise, you just throw around vaguely ominous words the meaning of which you do not comprehend and, frankly, sound like an idiot.
Every time I think I have seen the farthest corner of a fandom I find a new, even deeper corner. Like a staircase that leads to another secret hidden staircase.
And one day I'll find the goddamn bottom and by jove when I do the entire academy will hear about it!
