Anti Leigh Bardugo - Tumblr Posts

The Demonizing of Change

A trend I've noticed in modern media is that many stories have the message of "protect the status quo". Whether it's a Marvel movie or a fantasy book, the fact that so often the villains are the only ones who fight to change society remains the same.

We all know the story: they were hurt by the system's flaw(s) and so they rose up to destroy that harmful system and in the process destroyed themselves. I'm not saying that this character type is wrong or bad (definitely overused imo), but the framing of the narrative and the protagonists is the issue.

The narrative typically shows the villain's first wrong doing to be the act of rebelling against the system. From the moment the person chose to reject the harmful system, they were in the wrong, or so the narrative frames it. Meanwhile, the protagonist may question and see injustice but they never fight it; it's just accepted and blindly defended. What's worse is the audience chooses to completely accept this telling and sides with the harmful regime the protagonist defends.

I find that some of the most drastic examples of these issues are Daenerys in GOT and the Darkling in the Grishaverse/SaB.

Daenerys Targaryen

One thing I want to specify before I go into this is that Dany's GOT ending is purely bad writing. It's not foreshadowed or justified in any way, so I'll be addressing how D&D tried to frame her past after S8e6 aired and how her antis interpret her.

According to D&D, we should see the beginning of Dany's "madness arc" from the very first season. Namely how she reacted to Viserys' death. While this isn't Dany rejecting a harmful system, her choosing to not defend Viserys (why would she??) is also her choosing to leave behind the cycle of abuse of her early life. It also sets the precedent of Dany killing/allowing the deaths of evil men.

Speaking of evil men, D&D also tried to paint Dany's campaign against slavery as a sign of her "megalomania and madness". This is where we get to the actual fighting against the system. Dany is leading a slave revolt and forcefully overthrowing the masters and the oppressive governments.

The way D&D tried to spin it was that Dany was wrong for using violence, and Tyrion's peaceful method was more successful. Except Dany did try peace in Meereen, it didn't work. She made concessions, she made agreements, she locked up her dragons and they weren't working. That's the whole point of her last chapter in ADWD.

However, the show chose to make it so Dany was failing because she was "too violent" and ultimately made the freedmen hate her. This choice, a clear deviation from the book, is the beginning of them trying to make Dany fall into the trope of "as bad as those you're fighting". In her fight to end slavery, she becomes as oppressive as the masters.

Which is just blatantly wrong. We see in the show that the freedmen are still free, they sit in her councils, they can come to her with their complaints and she listens. Dany is a queen, not a master. The show was already trying to gaslight its audience into believing the opposite of what they wrote. The same goes for her supposed violence. The violence she exerts is almost always towards the slavers, except when she executed Mossador for murder. That was her carrying out justice, why that was portrayed as a bad thing is beyond me.

The implications of the choices D&D made in adapting Dany's Meereen arc are very disturbing. They're basically saying that systematic and centuries old oppression should never be addressed with violence. The people who actively fight oppression are just as bad as the oppressors. If you can't magically fix a system that's been flawed for centuries immediately, you're a tyrant.

The choice to resolve the arc by having Tyrion come in with some great peaceful solution was plain stupid and sexist. We have seen in history that trying to unobtrusively phase out slavery doesn't work. By leaving the elite slave owners in peace, they are allowed to simply find ways to get around or wear down the changes. We see that in ADWD in Meereen by the way. Also the whole idea that a wise man had to come and fix the irrational woman's problem is so gross.

So basically: D&D took an arc about fighting oppression and learning that concessions only continue the cycle of violence and made it into a story about how violence is bad and you can actually just reason with slavers.

The disgusting ideas continue in season eight, where Dany torches KL for no reason and is put down like a rabid dog. Dany is the only character who wants to end oppression in this show. She's the only person to see and experience the suffering of the oppressed and chooses to do something about it. Season seven is full of her talking about leaving the world a better place and breaking the wheel. But in season eight "breaking the wheel" is turned into th deranged battle cry of her desired empire.

Let me restate that: the one character who fought to end systematic oppression is turned into the "true oppressor". Dany's desire to tear down the system that the entire show established as being unjust and awful is made into a sign of madness. Even in season seven, people were rolling their eyes at her talking about breaking the wheel.

Meanwhile, the protagonists of the show end it benefitting from the same system that tortured them the whole time. Westerosi society is shit, but the show ends glorifying the sexist, homophobic, classist, and feudalist kingdoms. They even laugh at Samwell Tarly when he suggests destroying the monarchy. All this sends the message that embracing the system is good, rebellion bad, and shut the fuck up if you're not happy.

Dany was reduced to a cautionary tale against fighting the system. I've seen people frame it as "seeking power is bad", but that doesn't make sense, as characters like Sansa actively seek power and are rewarded by the narrative. Dany's mistake was trying to change the world, rather than supporting it as it is.

The Darkling

The Darkling is a very different character from Dany; he's an actual villain. Aleksander is someone who has already reached the "become what you hate most" part of the trope, so he spends the whole story committing atrocities. The issue with his portrayal is the fact that the narrative and protagonists never address his very real reasons for fighting in the first place.

The grisha as a group are persecuted all throughout Ravka, they have been for centuries. The whole reason Aleksander begins his fight was to protect his people. By the time the series begins, the grisha are more protected, though only because they have become weapons of the state. That was only through Aleksander's mechanisations.

Aleksander became a villain in his attempts to save his people, making him a tragic character. So he has perfectly fallen into the trope, and, unfortunately, so do the protagonists. Alina and her allies all have seen and suffered under the cruelty of the Ravkan monarchy, however, they quickly dismiss just how awful it is. By the end of the story, the Darkling has become, in their eyes, the sole perpetrator of evil in Ravka.

There are no attempts made to rectify the constant damage done by the Apparat, in fact he's left to run free. Alexander Lanstov and Tatiana Grimjer are simply shipped off to a private island where they never are made to pay for the awful things they have done. There are no political reforms done to ensure the safety of grisha in the future; they're basically relying on the goodwill Zoya and Alina have bought with the people.

So basically, the minor villains who all had no reason to be completely atrocious receive basically no punishment from the narrative. Meanwhile, Aleksander, who had very valid reasons for wanting to overthrow the government, is ultimately given a fate worse than death. All his reasons for hating the Ravkan government and the power it has are ignored, even though the story set up that he's not wrong. The resolution of the story leaves the grisha just as, if not more, vulnerable to the prejudice and hatred of the world than they were before.

The narrative is communicating that Aleksander rising up for his people is worse than the centuries of corrupt Lanstovs. Aleksander is worse than the man who stirs up religious fanaticism and exploits the people through it. Yes, Aleksander did horrible things, but so did every other antagonist in the series, but he's somehow the worst because...well, he's grisha.

That's the only other difference between him and the others, aside from his motives. So either Bardugo is supporting the in-universe prejudice against grisha or she's saying rising up against an oppressive system is wrong. I don't expect her or any other author to have complex political and social commentaries in her story. However, she chose to create a world containing those elements and a main character who suffers from them. She chose to make the issues with the system have a prominent place in the story. And she chose to ignore them in the end.

Aleksander did awful things in the name of a just cause, this creates a complex moral issue that the story just never addresses. The established injustices and sanctioned atrocities by the Lanstovs are all ignored in favor of bringing down the dangerous rebel. That kind of message is pretty fucked up. Yes, Nikolai is a better man than his father, but what about his descendants? The propaganda of the Apparat and his church are extremely strong, it's only a matter of time before that propaganda once again starts turning people against grisha. The hatred of grisha is still embedded into Ravkan society.

Aleksander was the only character who was actually set on protecting and bettering the lives of the grisha. His original mission was still extremely important, no matter what he devolved to. The fact that the protagonists just blatantly dismissed just how dangerous Ravka still is for grisha is frustrating.

The treatment of both Dany and Aleksander by their writers and narratives show a hatred/mistrust of rebellion against the status quo, no matter how atrocious it is. The message of the trope is that people who fight against a system are worse than the system itself. I'm not saying that was Bardugo's intention (D&D I'm much less sure about though), but the way both the Darkling and Dany were written combined with the endings of the stories support that idea.

I fully believe that if Nikolai knew Darkling’s full plan, he would’ve joined him.

I highly doubt sab is going to get the green light for season 3 or anything else beyond season 2

They honestly murdered Nikolai’s character. This character is being the only monarch who cares about his country and his people. The whole reason he created Sturmhond, the whole reason he’s a privateer, the whole reason he works for the Darkling and kidnappings Alina. This entire character is based on his love for his country and him doing anything he can to make it better for his people. It’s the whole reason I fell in love with his character, I love that he was an inventor and a strategist prince with military experience, everything you look for in a leader. And now you’re telling me that he has to be convinced to save Ravka?! It was Alina in the books who need to be convinced to save the country. Don’t ruin his entire character just to make Alina look better. No matter what you do you won’t make me like her and now they made me hate the only protagonist I liked. Fuck you.

He was the perfect balance between Alina and the Darkling. And the only hero I liked. He should be the one ruling Ravka not Zoya, he was the perfect man for it, I can’t believe LB threw away his life goal, the everything he worked for away just to have Zoya “can’t control her anger” Nazyalensky on the throne, it’s fucking ridiculous. Like Nikolai had a whole plan for democracy. 

Yk im gonna say I like the Darkling because he’s hot just to piss of the antis when that’s not even the top five of the reasons I like him

Look I don’t like Zoya but I do like Sujaya Dasgupta

I’ll see y’all tomorrow

I haven’t even watched the show and I gotta say what the heck is happening?? I wanna say I’m surprised but I’m not

I still can’t with Nikolai’s character, I’m on episode 4 and I can’t stand him, he feels like a comic relief, an arrogant prince who happens to be a good person. And while his whole plan about hiring the crows was strategic, it made no sense, it just seemed like an excuse for the crows kidnapping Alina and than selling her into slavery and it didn’t work because they still didn’t know why they were kidnapping her. And than he sets a trap for her to board his ship and has her convince him to save his own country like that wasn’t already his plan, it worked in books because he works for the Darkling but in the show it does not. I see no reason as to why he didn’t reveal himself before, in the books he had to drag Alina to the country and than reveal himself so she couldn’t say no but in the show she was ready, so there was no reason for him to hide his identity. And he said that he didn’t reveal it before because she wouldn’t come but she’s still with him after he revealed himself. So everything was pointless anyway.

And the fact that The Darkling was just sitting around doing nothing, nothing that contributed to the plot anyway, is just ridiculous. It’s like Alina and the Darkling switched roles.

Episode six and I gotta say the Grisha deserve better than these fools as their savior

Yeah this part confused me as well, like why was she so scared like he committed some horrible crime. Sure the monsters were scary but he literally saved Genya and the other locked in cages by the first army and she was looking at him like he was some monster, he did her a favor and he did nothing to make Genya turn on him. No threats or anything, he was being perfectly fine.

He also said that Alina is here in East Ravka.

Well, then we find her. She needs to know.

What we did to her is unforgivable.

Do you know what Kirigan has? The nichevo'ya. We’d never be able to forgive ourselves if… if we didn’t try to warn her.

This is Danya conversation… and it’s just so…

Why do you NEED to find Alina? Because she’s the MC? What WE did to her?! … and that’s what? Okay, David feels guilty about the amplifier, but what is Genya’s unforgivable transgression? Those stupid fucking letters? Why would you warn her? Because the Darkling’s killing himself by raiding Grisha execusion grounds and planning to overthrow the shitty rapist king?!

Why everyone seems to care about Alina’s feelings, but not the ongoing wars and pogroms?

Please tell me Mal gets that tattoo, that’s the only thing that would make this better

The fact that Zoya, Nina, Jesper and Tolya were able to walk around Shu Han without fearing capture is just ridiculous, like did they forget the part where Shu Han cuts up Grisha to experiment on them?

MAL?! STURMHOND?! I would’ve had Malina endgame at this point

I cried, literally the only people I cried for. They stole the show for me. I hated every single one of the heroes for what happened to them. They were just fitting for their freedoms and their right as people and they were murdered and looked at as the bad guys for. I knew they were done for when the crows showed up.

Yes that’s what being Grisha means, to be blessed. It’s not like it means a death sentence or anything, why would it mean that? Grisha aren’t being hunted, killed, experimented on, or sold as slaves in Ketterdam.

While we’re on this, I don’t like the crows in the show and I don’t care for them in the books. I literally cried when they showed up here.

Yeah for the worst

Can’t believe people on Twitter hate Fruzsi (the tide maker on Darkling’s side) couldn’t be me

Lockwood & Co deserve a second season more than Shadow and bone deserves a third