#גרישאווערס

[mayedays]

At the risk of sounding deranged again...

Because my brain hates me, I occasionally get hit particularly hard by The Paranoia™ that the people saying ~the Darkling is basically Hitler~ are interpreting authorial intent correctly and that Bardugo might literally think it appropriate to base the Grisha on the Jewish Scientists who fled to America in the era around WWII and base their leader on Hitler (or Stalin).

However, I've come to some conclusions surrounding this.

(1) regardless of her opinion, I think that its deeply NOT okay, and don't think I'm insane for holding that viewpoint no matter what The Paranoia™ says (although I'm frustrated that I don't know that I have a logical justification for the viewpoint, but on the other hand, I'm not sure that I should have to),

(2) if Leigh disagrees with me on that front (i.e. he is supposed to be Grishaverse!Hitler), she certainly has a right to do so, but I have an equivalent right to decide that I don't respect the judgment (artistic or otherwise) of anyone who would consider that a reasonable thing to do, and so I don't actually care if she did mean for him to be Grishaverse!Hitler, and

(3) arguing he's Hitler is fucking stupid and insensitive because the thing that sets Hitler apart from other tyrants/dictators/facists/etc is the massive industrialized genocide he committed against two vulnerable ethnic minorities (who had a long history of being horrifically mistreated by the ethnic majority) and not only does Aleksander not do anything like that, he is part of a historically-vulnerable (although not ethnic) minority (Hitler was not--anyone saying otherwise has swallowed some rancid & bizarre Nazi propaganda). It's clearly canon that he's a mass murderer and was long before the start of TGT but there's no evidence of deliberate systemic persecution, let alone systematic genocide, of a vulnerable minority demographic to destroy them as a people (at least not on his end, Fjerda is another story). I'm pretty sure that bombing a city is only genocide if its part of a project to destroy an ethnic or national group. (I'm not going to try to claim that he would never commit genocide--its debatable but not something I'm all that interested in seriously litigating--only that I don't think he actually does.) Its insensitive because, leaving aside for the moment if its possible to compare a fictional person to a real-life war criminal without being insensitive, by comparing a character which does not preside over death camps to a real person who definitely did...it treats the Holocaust (& the specific form it took) as dismissible and unimportant.

But having said all that...I don't feel like I have a very good rational explanation for why its beyond the pale to base the Grisha on the Jewish scientists of WWII while also basing their historic leader on Hitler. I just basically have a disgust-based argument, which leaves me kinda dissatisfied because I feel like if I'm right I should be able to construct a logical one...but its slippery like an eel and squirms away every time I try.

[mayedays]

I just wish I were brave enough to talk about the fandom stuff I want to talk about. I’m not sure why I don’t (well, ok, it’s probably the executive dysfunction and social anxiety problems). I keep thinking of posts I want to make but then I don’t write them, or when I try to write them they seem incoherent.

Also, I’m probably not brave enough to tag them with the official fandom tags, but I’d like to be able to use some sort of personal tag. I just can’t seem to think of good ones and when I finally do I forget them soon after. Why is deciding how to tag hard? Why do I have to overthink everything?

Anyway, I think I might tag my grishaverse posts גרישאווערס (or to be cute, גרישאווערס צאָרעס, bc I do have grishaverse troubles!) That will certainly keep them out of the primary fandom tags (particularly since I’m not ever sure if its a correct transliteration of grishaverse) and its appropriate since a lot of my thoughts are related to the Jewish-persecution metaphor Bardugo keeps kinda sorta admitting to in interviews (and then soft-pedalling, possibly for the same reasons I have grishaverse tsuris).