#even sacrificed herself in the most dramatic way possible so that she could traumatize her two surrogate daughters

[shittycartoonmomshowdown]

Shadow Weaver (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power) vs. Alma Madrigal (Encanto)

[retvenkos]

so, i’m just— are we ever going to address the problem of mal???

(spoilers for ruin and rising and king of scars under the cut!)

and no, i’m not talking about his attitude or his choice of tattoo, i’m talking about his sheer existence.

because i don’t think we talk enough about the fact that mal quite literally died and was somehow resurrected with little explanation. at some point, they try to explain it away by saying that because he was an amplifier, he has two lives, but that’s just cheap. when has that ever been the case for any other amplifier?

we even know two other human amplifiers that didn’t have this mercy! baghra was a human amplifier and when she sacrificed herself, she was dead. she didn’t get a second life. and the darkling was another human amplifier, and to get him to come back to life, we had to have a full on ritual. it was an arduous task, and even if it was made possible because of his second life, mal never got a ritual. there is no reason why he should be alive.

it doesn’t make sense that mal is the exception because he’s a human and has two untrained corporalki friends who aren’t even healers.

and let’s talk about who saved mal real quick, because while i love tolya and tamar, they are untrained heartrenders. they’re ability to mend wounds is at most passable, by virtue of their order and the fact that they’ve never been properly trained.

furthermore, resurrection has never been a heartrender power! even trained heartrenders can’t do it! they’ve been able to make some impressive saves, sure, but they can’t bring people back to life. that’s the power of merzost, which, tolya and tamar most definitely don’t know how to use.

(although if miss leigh bardugo ever wanted to say that they somehow used it because.... i don’t know.... the saints in the fold somehow possessed them at that moment, it would make more sense than the explanation we got. she could say that... idk sankta lizabeta knew she was going to need mal alive to fully resurrect the darkling so she saved him. even that level of suspicious foresight would make more sense.)

and let me just state this once again: mal was not mortally wounded - mal was dead. he died. in order for an amplifier to work, you have to kill it. you can bond with with an amplifier and your memories can become one once you’ve killed it, but the amplifier never gets to chill out in its body again because the body died, and it’s power is now yours.

by all accounts, mal was dead and his power belonged to alina. alina didn’t do the psychic bond because she didn’t know it was a thing, and therefore, mal is gone in that sense too. his memories aren’t one with alina, his body is dead, and his power has been transferred to alina.

but hey! miss leigh bardugo wants him to be alive (even though he still died)! fine. chill. cool.

cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

then maybe, just maybe, we could talk about mal living a half life? this one is more on the fandom than miss leigh bardugo, since he doesn’t show up much in the later books, but i hear all this talk about how traumatic and wrong it was for alina to lose her powers (which i’m not arguing with), but then people turn around and say that it’s not as traumatic for mal.

which, on one hand, i understand. grisha power is very much connected the wellbeing of grisha. when not using her power, alina felt like a husk of a person. mal’s ability to ~uwu track animals~ is not on the same level......................... maybe.

now hear me out, please.

mal has literally never been without his amplifying powers. even when underground, there were animals, and even if there weren’t animals, there were people (and grisha) around him. there was literally never a case in which his powers could have gone unused because they were connected to sensing life, which you are never without... unless you’re dead.

we have no idea how it affected mal to lose that. he could feel just as lifeless.

also, mal has to cope with the fact that he quite literally died. i don’t know about you guys, but i feel like resurrection could be pretty traumatic. especially when that resurrection has you coming back without a substantial part of you - mal’s world doesn’t hum with life the way it used to. that’s a pretty dramatic change. and it never gets addressed in his pov! the most we get is the infamous line that “the boy and girl had both known loss,” and people ream on that line because “mal doesn’t know loss like alina.” but literally how do we know that to be true? we don’t. 

mal never gets to share how he feels about this resurrection, so all we have is conjecture.

the only person we see deal with resurrection through their pov is the darkling, and while he doesn’t make a big fuss about it.... it’s the darkling. he’s lived for an eternity. his experiences are an outlier and shouldn’t be counted. he’s had an eternity of dealing with coming back to life (metaphorically). he’s had centuries filled with merzost to really desentize him to that whole process.

mal does not. he’s just your average 18-year-old boy. he literally died and was brought back to life my some kind of piss-poor deus ex machina [1]. i could not fathom that being my reality.

i think it's unfair of us to say that mal doesn’t know deep loss. if we’re tracking with the original material, mal had two lives inside of him, and now he has one. he is quite literally been halved.... just like alina.

whether or not you want to say their loss is equal or alina’s is worse is not what i want to argue. i don’t think you can really quantify loss - especially these kind of losses - but all i’m saying is that both underwent some very traumatic things, and i think it’s fair to say that “the boy and girl had both known loss,” and to say that mal deserves to be written about in depth in fics.

anyway, i don’t have a proper way to end this because i’m just..... ranting about how mal’s ending was piss poor and made no sense. (he should have died on the fold.) but yeah, i really wanted to talk about the problem of mal, and now i have. thank you for my soap box.

____________ [1] don’t fight me on my use of this term. the explanation given for bringing mal back to life is 100% a poorly done deus ex machina. an unexpected power - a trump card - that wasn’t explained before, and wasn’t used after, saves mal’s life simply so leigh bardugo doesn’t have both of her love interests die at the end of the series. simply to save the story from hopelessness. that’s a god move; that’s a deus ex machina if i have ever known one. and it’s poorly done because it’s never mentioned again and all the lore goes against it. furthermore, i use this qualifier because in my opinion, mal should have died on the fold. it would have been a better character ending, and if you want to hear more on that then head on over to this post by yours truly.

[graceivers]

Review #98 - The Contract

The Contract Author: Melanie Moreland Genre: Billionaires & CEOs, Contemporary Romance Rating: ★★★★ Recommendation: give it a shot; once was enough Summary: Richard VanRyan is in need of a wife to turn his image around. Katharine Elliott is in need of a secure, paying job. The two had a rather antagonistic work relationship. How, then, can they possibly pull off being in a fake relationship with each other?

Female Lead: Katharine was very cool. She was too forgiving in my opinion, but I guess that was made this character. The best part of this character was surely her resilience and strength. Given that she witnessed her parents’ tragic deaths, her injuries, her less than stellar time in foster care, and then having to put up with Richard’s cruelty for a year, Katharine was undoubtedly a tough and brave woman who deserved a lot after all she had gone through and sacrificed for others. And even with all that adversity, all she was was kind. She was kind and patient and knew which battles to fight. Katharine never asked for much—certainly not for herself. Moreland struck an excellent balance between reserved, cautious, self-sacrificing Katharine and “Go fuck yourself, VanRyan” Katharine. I liked this character very much. Male Lead: There was something wrong with Richard. I mean that both seriously and not seriously. On the serious side, I found his logic perplexing. His timetable to persuade the Gavins that he was a changed man made little sense to me. His attitude and behavior with Katharine seemed all over the place at times. And maybe part of that was just his thought process and him trying to gauge his feelings for her as they changed. But at some points, his behavior—kissing Katharine in private when there was no show to put on—contrasted with his attitude—not interested in love and relationships. Did he want in her pants? Yes. Was that an adequate reason as to why he was being tenderly affectionate with her in private? No. However, Moreland did in the end show development and progression in this character albeit slowly and perhaps not completely. Did I expect him to suddenly not be a jerk anymore? Probably not. But geez, he was so snippy sometimes. Katharine was a saint for putting up with him and finding it in herself to love him even if the sweet parts of him were hidden somewhere in there. Plot & Writing: The Contract was an enjoyable book, I swear. But this is going to be another one of those reviews where I might have more questions and critical things to say instead of squealing and heaping it with praise. Again, I repeat and maintain that this was a good book, one that I liked. Let me just explore some of the parts that made me think a bit more than perhaps intended.

First, while I sympathized with Richard’s reluctance to talk about his past given his parents’ neglect, I was honestly expecting something more dramatic and traumatic. That past certainly explained why he was so cold as a grown man, but he made it sound so horrendous like something grossly horrible had happened to him. Yes, the neglect was terrible. But his story in comparison to Katharine’s background? I thought the latter won out, which unfortunately made Richard look a little more like a jerk than he already was. A side note regarding this, it was actually not my favorite that Katharine pestered Richard so much for his story. Did I believe he needed to talk about it? Yes. Did I appreciate Katharine’s compassion in response to Richard’s revelation? Yes. But she was kind of pushy about extracting his past from him. She told him what happened to him freely of her own volition. Her badgering Richard for his story was not my favorite.

Let’s move on to the actual relationship between Richard and Katharine. Yes, I liked this true enemies-to-lovers trope going on. I particularly enjoyed the fact that Moreland didn’t overdo the whole sexual tension thing. Were there aspects of it? Absolutely. But I think what helped the author’s cause was that Katharine and Richard were true enemies at the beginning. There was zero antagonistic sexual tension going on, and I was grateful because that is one trope I could probably do without. And while I did like the growth of the relationship and watching them move from enemies to allies to lovers, I had a difficult time deciphering when those shifts actually happened. Are they ever truly clear cut in real life? No. But there were just some times I couldn’t wrap my head around the direction of the relationship. How was Katharine comfortable kissing and being affectionate with Richard in private before she knew she was in love with him? How did Richard go from being a cruel boss to her to then someone so desperately in love with her? One thing that particularly bothered me was the fact that Richard only started talking to Katharine in a civilized manner and even remotely noticed her when she got a makeover. That was a little… sad to read. Surely just about any girl would look infinitely more beautiful with a swanky new haircut, expensive clothes, and makeup on her face. And sure, yes, Richard got to know Katharine as a person, so that helped his cause, but really… Katharine was only worthy of Richard’s time and attention after she got a makeover on his dime? Pardon my language, but to quote Katharine, go fuck yourself, VanRyan.

And briefly, again, some of the logic of the events in the book did not make sense to me. As I mentioned before, Richard’s timetable to dupe the Gavins did not compute. If he was trying to avoid suspicion, why did he rush the engagement and then marriage? If anything, finding out a guy like Richard with his playboy past rushing into marriage so quickly would only increase my suspicion rather than subdue it. And normally pragmatic Katharine went along with it? No sense, I tell you. Also, what was with that part where Richard’s boss was like, ‘I know where Katharine is, but I’m not gonna tell you because you have to figure it out yourself or else you’re not worthy’ when Katharine left Richard? What was that? Seriously. Yes, it kind of made sense that Richard should have figured it out on his own, but the inadvertently and yet wholly sinister way his boss’ intentions there came out was very strange. Richard getting his job back also seemed illogical; okay, maybe less illogical and more undeserving but still odd nonetheless. The Gavins were like, ‘Richard, we think you’re lying and you haven’t changed, but we still want to give you a chance anyway; we have a strong feeling about it!’ What? Seriously? Not much sense there either.

And on a side note, how unfortunate it also was that Moreland didn’t really give Katharine any long-term aspirations. So, what did this woman honestly do after all this drama was settled? She became a part-time assistant to her extended ‘family’, volunteered more than she worked a legitimate job, and had babies for Richard? Katharine had so much drive throughout the first half of the book; she was someone that had essentially been working all her life. And now she more or less lounged around because she married a rich dude? That was pure fantasy stuff right there, and this time, it did not sit right with me. Moreland reducing Katharine to essentially a housewife ‘because she deserved time off after all the drama in her life’ did not cut it for me. At all. Favorite Part(s): Richard asking for consent from Katharine before initiating sex! I did a mental fist pump the two times I saw it occur, especially when Katharine had explicitly said no sex during their arrangement and neither had fully come to terms with their feelings for the other yet. Good stuff right there, I’m telling you.

But also, Richard desperately seeking the approval of his new boss and the Gavins. I thought that relationship was written the most beautifully. We really saw Richard vulnerable, and though never stated explicitly, it was so obvious why he craved their approval—that after the absolute neglect from his own family and just about everyone else, there was finally someone in his life that seemed to care about him. Of course, then, Richard wouldn’t want to disappoint them in fear of someone leaving his life again when he so desperately wanted them to stay in it. I could maybe even argue that his relationship with his new boss was equally as important to cultivate as much as his relationship with Katharine (if not more?). Final Thoughts: Oh, The Contract played at my heartstrings. As a romance about true enemies-to-lovers, yes, I enjoyed the book. But there were a number of details that struck me as odd as mentioned above. Did those things detract from the experience of reading this story? No, not if my rating means anything. But certainly had those specific issues been addressed, the book would’ve gotten an even higher rating. In the end, I would still recommend reading The Contract if enemies-to-lovers is a favorite trope of yours, or fake relationships, or billionaire romances with a Cinderella effect. I think there’s something here for everyone to at least give the book a shot.