#╰ 🗡 𝐎𝐎𝐂 — himbo energy but like lesbian

[biblade]

not wanting the personals to find my posts vs wanting to spread the pro-mal agenda.......

[biblade]

yall know i love my boy but due to time restrictions and low energy, i think its time 😔

for now, mal is going to be moved over to my multi : @fateviled.

im hopeful i can get the muse for him back enough to be here soon, but it just isnt happening right now

[biblade]

this might be an extremely lukewarm take but sometimes i think hating gale is on par with hating mal. not to the same degree but both of them have some similar characteristics in what people label them as toxic for that can more easily be summed up by 'this character is a literal teenager who suffered through tremendous trauma and not everything you want to believe is black and white'

[biblade]

i'm queueing some memes to post while im away at work, so send some while the muse is high! but also like this if you want me to send memes once im out<3

[biblade]

do people who never knew about glomping sleep easy at night

[biblade]

wild west au when pals

[biblade]

Okay, so now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I’m gonna go ahead and dissect the issues I found regarding s2 pertaining to Mal.

It feels strange to say considering I was expecting the opposite when anticipating the new season, but I didn’t hate the direction that they took his character in. A lot of the other characters were changed to fit the narrative, but I feel like at their core book Mal and show Mal are very much the same with some parts omitted for the sake of the storyline.

But there still was a lot omitted and changed that left much to be desired. Ultimately, show Mal is the “best” version of him. Show Mal was catering to the people who hated him in the books, and for that, he was stripped of all of the struggles he faced and the pain and instead reduced to one thing: the simply happy ending for Alina, the obvious choice, the perfect endgame love interest. Is this what Mal was always meant to be on the surface regardless of portrayal? Yes. Does it work for the direction the show was going? Yeah, sure.

So, I didn't hate it. If anything, it feels like he was one of the least disrespected characters, and Archie gave it his all.

But here's the thing:

If you're going to entirely change a character's ending, you have to have some force driving behind that besides one randomly dropped line late in the game about him thinking "like Sturmhond." Because stripping him of characteristics that don't pertain to his relationship with Alina (like showing that he craves freedom, like letting us see how comfortable he is at sea and around people and him laughing and joking and being free) just doesn't work when you've made a character whose entire personality is Alina. Am I supposed to feel happy for Mal to have gained that freedom when at the same time it feels like he's lost everything, has lost everything? He's grieving that piece of himself that died, and now he's losing Alina too. Why don't I feel like he's getting something back?

And the running gag of "don't touch that" when he's on the ship, subjecting him to playing a character but given no control of the ship, just doesn't work. The humor loses all meaning when you feel like he's not suited for this. One scene of him being explained how being a pirate works, of being trained, of talking to the crew of the Volkvolny would have made a difference.

That's not to say I didn't like the ending! It worked for him, for who he is in this story! He's been given the chance to have agency and find a purpose beyond being the love interest, the promise of having some complexity that was taken from him to rush the narrative along. It just very much feels like, with everything they did in the season, his character went from Point A to Point B without much thought of what happened between those two. Isn't it supposed to be about the journey, the adventure?

I'm not going to discuss the way in which he was brought back. As much as I love the idea of "comes back wrong," if s3 happened did ANYTHING to him they would not be safe from these hands. It's a good concept, and probably makes more sense than the book's resurrection, but right now I don't like it. He has been a puppet to his bloodline and merzost for long enough, don't make it worse. (But also, if merzost brought him back, why did he still lose his amplifier powers? It feels like they just wanted him to lose something.)

Regarding the revelation of him being the Firebird — it worked well, but was a little too in-your-face about it. The entire appeal for me is that you aren't supposed to know, Mal is supposed to be Just Some Guy Who's Really Good At Tracking until he's the key to everything. But from the moment the season started, everyone was questioning why he knew what he did. It lost some of the gut-wrenching realization of what would have to happen to him, to see the pieces fit together so early on.

So, yes. I have problems with it, but I didn't hate Mal. And down the line, I will likely make an au to explore the show's storyline, but I will keep my focus on book based interactions because that's my Mal.

[biblade]

i've complained about everything under the sun by now but we come back to the most important point:

where. were. mal's. curls???????

[biblade]

bitches be like 'i will stay book canon while also being slightly 👌 jealous of show canon'

[biblade]

gonna start being petty and photoshopping a wig on mal when s2 rolls around

[biblade]

i guess its back to being the #1 mal stan 😔

[biblade]

i know ive said this probably a thousand times but the way that mal gets so much hate really does amaze me.

boy has a realistic negative reaction to finding out his best friend (who he has already started to drift away from lbr) has this major secret he thinks she's lied about, all these years. boy feels betrayed, feels alone, feels conflicted when he's faced with her again and she's quite literally at the top of the world, where she should have been all this time vs the shitty hole they were always in. boy says hurtful things because he's hurt, but still ultimately comes to help her against all odds because he loves her (because he's always loved her). boy almost dies trying to follow her, already lost his friends. boy puts on a brave face when against certain death anyways, because he has to. because he can't be the one afraid. because its who he is.

boy never allows himself to show otherwise, not after surviving by some miracle. boy and girl are finally free from everything: the war, the army, their past. (not from the memories but you can never really escape those, can you?) and it doesn't last, they're dragged back in so cruelly: boy is dragged back into a world he was never a part of. boy puts on a brave face against certain death, because he has to. because he's not going to be the reason alina dies. and by some miracle, they survive.

boy is in a world he was never a part of and that's never been more obvious, nobody thinks he belongs. but he stays for her, who refuses to drift away but... she will. he can't keep her and she won't give up on their country because she's good, and fair, and she's the only hope they've got. he is so, so terrified of losing her and he pushes her away, because he's only human. because she's not, and he tells himself this is easier. and he self destructs, but he won't show fear, because he can't. he'll lose her to this country, its inevitable.

and then he almost does lose her and, what? what is he supposed to do if not dig in deeper, to make sure she makes it out of this in one piece, sun queen or no? boy can lose everything, but he can't let her light leave this world. she's the only thing that's ever kept him out of the dark. and he can't be afraid. not after knowing he'll die, not after realizing he's it. the final puzzle piece. because she'll be okay without him, because he's tired and he just needs her to be okay. and is that selfishness woven into the selflessness of it all? does it matter?

there's no right way mal could have reacted to anything and expecting that of him is genuinely unfair.

[biblade]

sometimes i try to write but then i remember how much i love blade boy and i start to tear up

[biblade]

nobody: absolutely nobody: me: okay but the malzoya agenda—

[biblade]

no but the way that there was literally no concrete proof that mal would have hated living in the castle besides that he 'couldn't watch alina be with nik' because they effectively removed all of the scenes that showed that and didn't even give us one scene on the volkvolny where he looked comfortable and at home, where it was clear freedom suited him i-

[biblade]

i think once i recover from the Damage, i'll probably develop a highly selective mixed canon au but trust it'll be highly selective