#it’s stan malyen oretsev time

[wewillbehappyagain]

reasons why mal is good and has always cared for alina

- stayed by alina’s side when they were small, best friends who helped each other

- fell in love with, or at the very least got a crush on her when they were younger, but felt bad about it because she was supposed to be his best friend, so he got with other girls which is totally fine

- saved her from getting run over by the darkling

- tried to protect her the first time on the fold

- lied directly to the darling’s face bc his words to alina had been private

- felt bad about not trying to get her to stay when the literal darkling took her away

- thought alina had forgotten about him

- missed her every day and constantly looked for her to tell her about things he saw or just to hear her voice

- volunteered to find the stag and go to fjerda even though it meant almost certain death and his best friends got killed and he only blamed himself

- deserted without a second thought to find alina even though he had it really good as a tracker and fit it, and deserting meant certain death if he got caught

- found alina bc he will always find her

- apologized for what he said to her at the winter fete

- found the stag for her, then couldn’t kill her when the darkling found them

- was so brave when he was about to be executed

- left ravka with her

- found rusalye for her

- stayed at the little palace even though he was SO miserable. he lived with the rumors, the questions, the degrading words, being treated badly

- did kiss zoya but alina (who almost kissed nikolai) and his communication was horrible. he didn’t want to kiss her bc she flinched when he tried

- apologized for that and was forgiven. alina even said that she had asked something of mal that she hadn’t been willing to give him

- rescued and threw himself in front of her again and again and again

- tried to kill people so she wouldn’t have to bc he knew it would haunt her even though it already haunted him

- when they knew (thought) it couldn’t be them, he tried to distance himself from her, and only asked that nikolai made himself worthy of her

- wanted to show her the meteor shower and was so disappointed when he saw her with nikolai

- treated misha amazingly and helped him through trauma

- when alina got mad at him and said some hurtful stuff he only joked about her sour moods and the time she put goose shit in his shoes

- as a child he promised ana kuya that he would marry alina and he did just that!!! icon

- promised to only better himself and realized that wanting and deserving wasn’t the same thing

- mal and alina will always turn to each other first when they see something wonderful

- mal is the only person alina has loved, and the only one who has loved her

- sacrificed his life for her

- wasn’t happy about alina losing her powers

- lost his own

- told alina that it was okay that she grieved the loss of her powers even when others had lost their lives

- alina always wanted to go back and have a quiet life with mal, and she got just that

- they had an ordinary life, full of ordinary things — if love can ever be called that.

[sixofyeet]

*meadow scene plays for the 56894th time*

me:

[lunaathorne]

[malyen0retsev]

the darkling desired alina and was drawn to alina, but had alina not had her power he would not have given a single shit about her. sure, he saw that darker side of her that the power brought to the surface, but when it’s argued that he loved the ‘true’ alina, that argument falls flat immediately when you ask yourself if he would have desired her without her powers (which he wouldn’t)

nikolai is a wonderful wholesome character who everybody stans, and is a genuinely good friend to alina no matter what, but once again, if alina didn’t have powers would he be seeking to marry her? absolutely not. he needed the political capitol of being married to the sun summoner. he deeply cares for alina, but would he be after her romantically without her powers? also no

mal meanwhile is at times terrified of alina’s powers, yes, but not because he’s jealous of the powers or resentful others now ‘see’ her. it’s because he’s terrified for her, for the smothering weight that has been put on her shoulders. does mal love her when she has her powers? without question. he gives up literally everything to be by her side when she has those powers and to support her. but does mal love her without those powers? also yes. without question. he marries her. he loves the non-powerful alina who is his home and he loves the powerful alina who saved him from the volcra TWICE. he loves her, in her entirety.

mal is the man alina ends up with, the man she marries, the love of her life, because he is the only person who loves her unconditionally, with and without her powers. it stretches him, it breaks him at times because he’s a human. but mal seeing alina above ‘the sun summoner’ is exactly the reason why he was the only person she was ever going to spend her life with. he is the only one who loves alina for alina. whatever else is attached or not attached to alina, he still wants her, he still loves her. and that is the core of malyen oretsev.

[greensaplinggrace]

What Is There To Celebrate About the Darkling? (Part 3)

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His shadow powers are so badass, literally how could you not celebrate him for that alone?

Villain wears black trope REPRESENT.

The way his cloak billows dramatically in episode one before Alina enters the Fold.

The way his cloak billows in general.

His little face in the background after his and Alina’s first kiss as he tries to compose himself.

Him knocking on the table in episode five when he gets back to see Alina. My mans was so hopeful that he’d finally get to third base with the love of his life. RIP.

Large hands. Very tall.

The way he literally cannot tear his eyes away from Alina during the entire scene where Alina dresses him and they have their first kiss.

The softest looking hair I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe Alina got to run her hands through it and she still left him.

How he urgently looks around for Alina outside after she leaves in episode five, right before he confronts Baghra. He’s very frantic and panting and clearly concerned and not being subtle at all about his emotions.

Also the way he walks when he’s leaving Baghra, with his hands stuck out to the side and his fists clenching and unclenching as his form grows smaller in the distance. He looks like a tiny penguin waddling away.

Son’s evil dastardly bastard plans once again thwarted by own mother. Can you imagine living for an eternity and never being free of your parents? Fuck all that other shit, no wonder he went darkside.

“She is all that matters now, not me. She is the future. She is the one-” SIMP

His little smile before he goes to answer the door after they kiss. The way his hold on her lingers as if he can’t bear to part with her. Forehead touch. They are giggling.

The way he runs back in for another kiss. This man is so gone it’s not even funny.

He calls her to him in the books and she spends the entire time agonizing over how upset he’s going to be. The man literally just wants to ask her about her day.

Defends Alina to Baghra after he witnesses her getting harassed. Defends himself to Baghra after she treats him like shit. Love that for him.

“I made something.” / “Let me make a mark on this world before I leave it.” / “It’s my own name I’m afraid of forgetting.” / “He understood then. The Grisha lived as shadows, passing over the surface of the world, touching nothing. Forced to change their shapes and hide in corners, driven by fear as shadows were driven by the sun. No safe place. No haven.” / “There will be, he promised the darkness, words written upon his heart. I will make one.”

Him offering Alina his kvas. They drink from the same glass.

Sasha “no thoughts head empty only Alina” Morozova having to look away and calm himself when Alina licks her lips after drinking his kvas.

Literally his entire confrontation with Kaz. Absolutely hilarious. Local centuries old Black Heretic gets bested by a teenager with one (1) flash grenade.

“I never intended for it to be the blight it’s become.” - Genuine regret. A+++.

Asks Mal what Alina’s favorite flowers are and then gives them to her. Was it manipulative? Yes. Was it awful? Absolutely. Was it the funniest and smoothest shit I’ve ever seen? 100%. I laughed my ass off.

Alina: *enters the fete dressed in the black kefta* *Darkling.exe has stopped working*

This man takes one look at her lack of guards and goes: what’s more important than how beautiful the wifey looks? her safety. *protective bf mode initiated*

He admires how pretty he appears in the mirror of his room with absolutely zero shame and 100% pride. We stan a vain icon in this house💕. Also the mirror is in front of the bed?!?! 👀👀👀

His knife ring.

“You looked like you needed saving,” as fire plays across his features and he looks at Alina with an expression that makes my soul want to splinter into pieces. The implications, the pain.

Will display his complete and utter adoration for Alina in front of the entire Court including the King and Queen despite the fact that that is the worst thing he could possibly do in the political environment.

“No ordinary tracker. No ordinary girl. Orphans of Keramzin reunited. AdOrAbLe.” - How do you say you have issues without saying you have issues?

The way he eclipses Alina when he’s stepping down from the dais. The inherent romantic symbolism of the eclipse and what that means for him.

Him getting excited about the stag to the point where he’s eagerly rummaging through the maps on his table and urgently asking Mal tons of questions.

The five second delay in his thoughts as he processes that Mal isn’t cooperating. Poor guy really thought that everything was finally coming up Sasha for once.

He constantly uplifts Alina after Baghra’s emotional abuse. He constantly helps her with her self esteem and reassures her that she’s doing well and that she just needs more time.

“Yeah I don’t know what Baghra’s summoning ability is,” he said, like a liar.

Even after Baghra suggests that Alina left he doesn’t believe it. He has to hear it from Kaz after searching for ages before he finally begins to believe it.

“You smuggle Grisha out of MY PALACE!”

Titty grab during the kiss scene.

He lifts her up onto the table!!

Local whipped dark overlord gets excited that Fedyor has found Alina and has to suffer through the embarrassment of acting like a lovesick fool when he learns it’s just about Nina.

His relationship with Nikolai.

The fact that Alina’s scarf blows past him before they even meet.

The way he nods with such an understanding expression when the Conductor is lying his ass off as if he sympathizes with everything the other man is saying and isn’t secretly planning his elaborate murder.

Puppy dog eyes all the time.

Every time his smile is forced and ingenuine and he looks like he’s about to stab someone.

Every time his smile is genuine and he looks super soft and loving.

“You have no chance, ShAdoW mAn.” Literally how is he ever going to recover from this.

His hands motions when he summons. I just think they’re neat.

He kills the Conductor. Hated that guy. And he looked sexy as fuck doing it.

He hates the Druskelle, he hates the Ravkan monarchy. I can relate.

He’s NOT a bootlicker, unlike some.

Dad mode gets activated when David raises his hand. Aleksander just goes along with it like an exasperated father.

Ben Barnes nose scronch.

He begs for Luda’s life.

“Merzost feeds on us. I forbid it!” two seconds later *frantic rummaging through notes on the merzost* *reading the Forbidden Knowledge™ without any hesitation* *Immediate Disaster Occurs*

“Mom look what I made!” “Your art is atrocious and you’re no longer my son.”

His history was written by the victors. The tale of the Black Heretic is straight up propaganda by the corrupt monarchy.

Immortal old man caught in a young adult love triangle: I read your letters. Malyen “what the fuck is happening on this here day” Oretsev: ??!?!?!!! who even are you??

Aleksander admitting he needs Alina.

Darklina hand holds.

He did not have to make that episode eight hand-hold on the skiff so sensual but he did it anyways.

The way he hides under his cloak like a turtle when Jesper shoots at him.

He looks so awkward and isolated at the fete surrounded by all of those colorful nobles.

He’s always ready to murder a bitch and honestly I respect that.

Would kill for his gf.

That entire scene where he kisses Alina in the snow in the books like the most awkward motherfucker and then goes “wtf just happened?! Darkling out” before fleeing the scene of the Emotion.

He’s eternally confused by his feelings for Alina and it’s hilarious.

“Looking for trouble, and if I cannot find it I will create it.”

He’s basically just a moth attracted to a fatal light. RIP.

The way he throws open double doors like a man on a mission.

“Follow.”

He’s utterly precious and I would die for him. 🖤

[comingoutofthecauldron]

on malyen oretsev as a character and a love interest

this might be slightly rambly and incoherent but i need to say it. malyen oretsev has been the underdog in this fandom for as long as i can remember. a little while ago it was the “malaria” jokes (very classy, folks), and then waves upon waves of mal antis and darkling stans/apologists, and even now a decent majority of the fandom is convinced he’s just boring or an asshole. and fair enough on that last account, if you genuinely don’t like him as a character, that’s fine. but there are a lot of accusations people throw mal’s way that i am really sick and tired of hearing, and hopefully this will help put a stop to them.

mal is not boring. mal is witty and charismatic and an easy friend, and he is also incredibly brave. when he thought alina was being tortured and brutalised by the darkling, he volunteered for a suicide mission to track the stag—which he didn’t even know existed—into fjerda because it was the only way he thought he could help her. that mission killed two of his best friends. people say mal is an asshole because of the way he treated alina when he saw her (months after she’d been dragged away from him against her will) happy and healthy in amongst the people who had looked down on the both of them their whole lives, after having just lost his best friends for her. i say his being upset was pretty understandable. and yes, he was a bit of asshole in siege & storm, but he’s a teenage boy and you cannot hold him to all these ridiculously high moral and behavioural standards (especially when you don’t hold other characters like nikolai or the darkling to those standards). everyone has their asshole moments. nikolai’s is ongoing. holding mal’s against him just because he’s not all-powerful like the darkling or royal like nikolai is bullshit, plain and simple.

as for malina, i have a lot to say on that front. a lot of people say that mal was only interested in alina after she got her powers, but that is blatantly untrue. the quote, “just you and me. it’s always just you and me, alina” literally happens in the first chapter of shadow & bone. mal himself said that he always loved alina, and her being taken away was the wakeup call he needed. if anything, alina’s powers only complicated their relationship—mal didn’t know how to deal with her becoming the very thing they’d both grown to resent after being treated like shit in the first army while the grisha were treated like royalty, which explains a lot of the tension in their relationship surrounding alina’s abilities.

people tend to say that mal didn’t like it when alina became powerful and less dependent on him, but that’s not right. mal never wanted alina to be less. he was afraid of what would happen to her if she became more. from his point of view, all that alina’s powers brought them was trouble; the darkling’s grooming of alina and his subsequent manhunt for them, nikolai’s proposal to alina (when he was an adult and alina was a minor), the apparat’s cult and imprisonment of them, the death of the only mother figure they’d ever known. in his mind, alina’s powers only ever brought them misery, and mal was scared of losing her to that misery. we saw how they were torn apart throughout the books, because mal was otkazat’sya, and he was not the only one who felt that that might never be good enough for alina. neither of them ever wanted the power that alina was given. that’s why it was so hard for mal to accept that alina wanted to keep it—he was scared it would corrupt her the way it had the darkling. he was scared of losing her.

the argument that really frustrates me is when people call malina abusive. say it with me, folks: malina is not an abusive ship. mal and alina loved each other unconditionally. even if he wasn’t happy about alina’s powers, he knew that it was important to alina that she use them to save ravka, and so he helped her. he owed ravka nothing. this was the country whose monarchy had essentially taken his life from him to force him into being little more than a foot soldier in their army; the country his friends had died for thanks to the darkling being placed in such a position of power; the country whose king let the people starve whilst he sat in his golden palace and wasted more money. mal helped alina save ravka not because he loved his country, but because he loved her. hell, he literally died for her.

whilst we’re on the subject, let’s talk about that quote that people like to say is abusive: “i love you, alina, even the part of you that loved him.” do you understand how monumental that quote is? mal found out that the darkling is the same darkling who made the shadow fold, the shadow fold that had taken numerous lives and that had gotten them into this mess in the first place. he was beginning to realise the extent of the manipulation alina had undergone at the hands of the darkling, the grooming and abuse. they both knew the atrocities that the darkling had committed, and yet mal has it in himself to tell alina that not only does he not care that alina ever thought she loved the darkling, he loves her all the same anyway? how is that abusive?

lastly, i want to talk about his most infamous quote: “i am become a blade.” this is one of my favourite quotes in the entire grishaverse, and i’m going to explain why. a lot of people think that it’s grammatically incorrect, but as your local grammar nerd, i’m here to tell you that it’s not! as alina notices, the actual tattoo is written in ancient ravkan: e’ya sta rezku. because of that, the quote translates with slightly strange phrasing, but that phrasing still makes grammatical sense. it’s sort of like how shakespearean english is still english, it just sounds different.

now, grammar aside, i want to talk about why the quote is so beautiful (to me, anyway). mal has been used all his life. when they were at keramzin, he tracked and hunted animals for them to eat. in the first army, he was used as a foot soldier and a tracker, and the darkling (and nikolai, to an extent) used him to track the amplifiers. he’d always had his agency taken away from him by those with more power, and he’d been used and mistreated almost every time. then he turns around and offers himself and his agency up to alina without a second thought. because he loves and trusts her that much. at this point, it doesn’t seem to him as though there’s any chance of him and alina ever being together or getting a happy ending. he’s not doing it for that. he’s doing it because alina wants to save ravka, and he loves alina, so he wants to help her do that. in all of his indecision about his life and what he is and who he is for alina, he is able to decide that to live in service of her, to live for her, is exactly what he needs to do. he is essentially saying, “i recognise your power and though i am afraid for you, i won’t hold it against you now. instead i’ll help you wield it and fulfil your destiny, even if that isn’t what i want/what i want for you and even if it gets me killed.”

mal is a teenage boy who had to mature very quickly under terrible circumstances. of course he’s not perfect and he makes mistakes, but i cannot for the life of me understand why he is hated on such a large scale. he was an asshole to alina at some points, yes, but alina was usually an asshole right back, and it was only because they were both pining and angry at their situation. if you still don’t like him, fine, but for the love of god, stop calling him abusive/toxic. he’s a good character and a healthy love interest (a rare sight in ya) and malina is a healthy romance. it’s that simple.