— Victoria Erickson

Me: I just think that if Leigh wanted to write a cautionary tale about a manipulative man who is beautiful but not as he seems, she should have made him a non-grisha prince like Nikolai. Because then you have someone who pretends to sympathize with the oppressed Grisha but is actually just exploiting them for his own gain which is a much more interesting commentary on society. And then Alina could have been the revolutionary trying to overthrow the system and help change things for the Grisha, opposed by a non-grisha who wants to control them. 

Instead, she makes the villain the one person actively fighting to improve things for the Grisha and ultimately gives Alina very little interest in the cause and makes the non-grisha characters nice and understanding and gives us a message of ‘you just need the nice people to be on the throne and then it will be fine’ which is a naive point of view. Its not about whether or not the Darkling is good, its about where she ultimately decided to place the villain in the story/world that bothers me.

Therapist: Can we please get back to your trauma.

Sportscaster Dale Hansen defends student wrestler Mack Beggs and takes a stand against transphobia

i’m so goddamn fucking sick of the argument that the darkling is based on an old toxic relationship from leigh bardugo, and that we’re meant to find him abusive because of that.

please stop being ridiculous. it’s fiction. the darkling is a fictional character, and if miss leigh didn’t want us to like him (which she, by the way, tried very hard for) she shouldn’t have created this entire narrative of a hunted & persecuted minority who have literally one person in the entire world to stand up for them. she shouldn’t have given aleksander the thousands of reasons for him to be the way he is. she shouldn’t have shown us all the centuries of torture and prejudice grisha received until the darkling made a safe haven for them.

human morals don’t apply to eternal beings. simple as that. there is no definite good or bad for him, all there is is life and death and the safety of his kind, who are still enslaved, experimented on, murdered, burned alive, and all other sorts of the most horrific things in the neighboring countries. was the way he treated alina morally right? no. of course it wasn’t. but he has lived centuries of war and loss for even a glimpse of hope and then it came in the form of a fickle teenage girl, who hadn’t seen the things he’d seen, and who didn’t have a clue about the hurt her kind had been receiving since the beginning of time. what he did was wrong, but in his eyes necessary; the end justifies the means.

and i could go on and on about this, explain all of his actions (which i very well can, this is the tip of the iceberg) but the thing is, i shouldn’t have to.

we are allowed to like a morally grey (or, in the hater’s view, entirely fucking evil) character because he’s fictional. we aren’t morally obligated to blindly take over the author’s opinions over their fictional characters because they brought them into this world to be critiqued. to be viewed and liked and hated. we are allowed to like and defend fictional characters despite the author’s intentions for them.

thank u for coming to my ted talk and @ the haters please stop making yourself look stupid. go outside, touch some grass. oh and stop tagging darklina underneath your “ten reasons why the darkling is evil” because it’s unnecessary honestly go take your negativity somewhere else.

painted some thoughts re: steve rogers and illness

so systemic oppression and state-sanctioned witchhunts of grisha leads aleksander to create a sanctuary for other grisha but because of how shitty the world treats him, he drives off the moral event horizon and tries to gain more power and put a stop to the endless wars while the "good guys" show up at the last second and decide he's evil and must be killed but after they kill him things are worse for grisha and the wars continue and all the systemic issues that led to aleksander being the kind of man he was still exist so....wtf did they accomplish or even learn?

sexy man bad?

Guys!!!!!! As someone who has only discovered him recently, I've never been happier!!!

M E R R Y  C H R I S T M A S 

“She can’t be gay! She’s obsessed with men!”

The men:

Right. After seeing the teaser and the buzz on the Internet.

I decided to buy the book "shadow and bone", I'm on chapter 6 - it's really WONDERFUL so far- But I'm madly in love with the "Darkling".

I first felt that they were going to push Mal and Alina down my throat, you know like the annoying trope of unrequited love, until one day they see each other 🤮.

But from kinky blood play, to chopping a man in half for her, to SHARING A HORSE, to joking around with each other.

Excuse while they become my new obsession!!!

But I'm a little worried as he is called the "darkling", like c'mon, you could try to be a little more inconspicuous!

Prayer circle. Please don't be evil! Prayer circle.

Since I see this word thrown around causally on here, this is a reminder that the Darkling does not commit genocide. He’s a mass murderer, but genocide has a specific meaning.

Criticise him for what he does - murdering civilians, mutilating Genya, assaulting Alina, but don’t call him genocidal.