Experience Tumblr Like Never Before
⚠️Warning spoilers for the shadow and bone books and the darklings name⚠️
Personally I never liked Alina or Mal.
Mal was just- he was something to say the least.
And as this lovely person said Alina just doesn’t care about anything but Mal. Ever since the very moment she found out she was grisha and could help her country, she just wanted to go back to Mal. I feel as if she never had any real interest in protecting or the wellbeing of grisha. During r&r we see Alina get extremely power hungry. She was extremely restless and rude towards Mal and everyone else because she so desperately wanted the firebird. When Nikolai proposes to her for obviously political interest she says no. Nikolai tells her that if they got married it could be good for this country seeing as she is grisha and seen as a saint by the people. She could aid the country and help unite the armies to make ravka stronger. Tbh it was in the country’s best interest but she shows no interest in helping the country whatsoever.
Throughout the entire series Aleksander was dehumanized by LB so much. I think it had something to do with the fact that she supposedly based his character off of her manipulative ex(?). At the end of r&rhe we see a side of aleksander that was more human as he died.
The one thing I can agree with M*lina shippers is the confusion over the fact a grown man like the darkling acts the way he does. He’s petty. He spends most of his time in book 2 & 3 doing evil cookie jar acts and using the force to spy on Alina. The thing is, this character is written this way. Most of the characters are annoying because they’re poorly written. The plot drives the characters not the other way around, so their growth remains stagnant. As a morally grey character, Aleks works so well. He cares for ravka and he’ll be the one to cross the line if it means the grisha are kept safe. But instead, he got retconned into a villain with no real plan, kills other grisha, forms an alliance with Fjerda, and dies. His death does nothing except make things worse. I’m so glad for Ben’s portrayal because he brought humanity to the character and the audience can sympathize with his plight. JML and Ben’s approach to darklina is also realistic compared to the book counterparts although I’m not really a shipper tbh. I prefer Luda because I feel like she is the perfect balance for Aleksander. She was clearly powerful, compassion and trustworthy
I mean, the thing with the Darkling is that the person that created him doesn't treat him like a human. So I wouldn't say that we could even call him 'a grown man', as my friend @yototothelalafell has pointed out about the book, he is incredibly dehumanised. So, in a Watsonian perspective, if he is not human and/or treated as such. Can we even expect him to act like a 'grown up man'? Is he even treated like a man at all?
Also, when LB is doing her stupid baiting in the first half of SaB, she basically describes him as every soldier's dream general: he goes around checking his troops instead of staying at court, eats with his men and overall seems like a polite person that his men keep following because he has managed to give all these people that would be burned or cut open in other places a home and position above "those dirty witches".
Then after presenting him like a perfectly reasonable person who is encouraging Alina, she just throws that 'twist' and opens the Evil Deeds Cookie Jar to never close it again. And as you said, the plot moves him because the plot needs a villain, his arc doesn't require villainy. I really can't say that I agree with m/alina shippers on anything because you don't need to ship Alina with someone to understand the characters are badly written, and even then the argument is wrong and seems to come from just dissing the Darkling. I mean, Mal doesn't act like a young man in a XIX setting either, he acts like a jerk jock from an American TV show and I can say that without shipping darklina because I don't really ship them in the books since they have little to no interactions that have enough emotional weight.
I mean, if you look at it from a character perspective, Fanon!Alina is... Basically Luda with Sun Summoner powers? Is Alina caring and warm? No. She is defensive and sarcastic to a point of being rude. Does she care about the Grisha? No, because she leaves them all to live as a rich woman in her orphanage. Does she embrace her identity as a Grisha and helps in the cause? No, because in the moment she loses her powers she says she is no Grisha anymore, even when her friends tell her the contrary.
All of this is the contrary of Luda, we see her complicit on Aleksander training the Grisha since the soldier says 'you two could train witches'. We see her being caring and warm with Aleksander and that he trusts her enough to make her aware of his immortality. Every time I see darklinas dismissing her to prop up Alina I am like: Sure, but Alina will murder him. No talk about soulmates can fix that.