#more was done for grisha rights and Ravka's problems in the kos duology than darkles EVER DID let's be real | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kanchelsis · 3 years

Note

If you wrote the Nikolai Duology, how would you change it? You have some good ideas!

aaaaaa thank you!! people have been so lovely about my salty post ghsfjks i'm kissing you all on the cheek 💕

to answer your question, i think it might be less about what i would do, and more about what i wouldn't do. i'll make some bullet points and say whatever comes to mind.

(to be honest, the idea of nikolai having his own duology has lost its appeal to me, which is sad because i adore him. i just believe he's a better side character than main, and there are more interesting grishaverse stories waiting to be told. but let's work on the assumption that i have to keep the basic pillars of the books and not just throw away the whole concept.)

ok so... zoya. i would take her in a completely different direction than lb did. i love a good morally ambiguous character, so i wouldn't just erase that - what drew me to her in tgt was her stubbornness, her shallowness, her capacity for petty cruelty, but also her determination and confidence. we can't just have her holding one of the most powerful positions in ravka and everyone just accepting that. not only does she need to have doubters, the doubters need to have a point.

we have a ruthless young woman, a soldier no less, suddenly needing to utilise diplomacy to protect an entire country. make her screw up. make her uncompromising and callous. make her human. don't expect her to step into this role seamlessly just so unlimited power can be handed to her on a silver platter.

if she has to be an ultrapowerful grisha, it's so much more logical to make her work for it. to hell with the saints on the fold stuff, what even was that?? lb tells us that everything we thought about grisha power is wrong, but 1) throws away the really cool magic system she made and 2) doesn't replace it with anything else. just let zoya be a squaller, not a dragon-saint-chosen-one or whatever.

writing this has kinda made me sad, since zoya could've been amazing, but anyway. onwards to nikolai.

this is the nikolai duology. if he's giving his name to the series i expect him to be the central character. i'd want his main struggle to surround identity and an uncertain future - who is nikolai, underneath the charm and flirtation? there could be an internal war between the demon, carefree sturmhond and the duty-bound king of ravka. both he and zoya are faced with a disarrayed court filled with people who don't think they have what it takes to lead.

there are so many nonsensical subplots in the duology that... fizzle into nothing. cut it down. pick a few things to focus on and give them the detail they deserve.

speaking of, the cult of the starless! lb took what could've been a source of endless interest and turned it into a bland caricature. we get it ma'am, you hate the darkling. but the problem is that the darkling's root motive gets conveniently glossed over in favour of character bashing. he wanted a safe world for grisha. that still doesn't exist. there's a tidbit about grisha no longer being forced to join the second army, but that was not the issue at hand at all? they're not going to know how to use their powers. they're still going to face discrimination.

so onto my point, what if the cult of the starless was predominantly grisha? those who feel let down by the world around them, who see the darkling as a martyr for a reason. now THAT would be something to contend with. a physical consequence for the events of tgt. put them next to people like genya and nikolai who intimately understand the harm the darkling has done, and you've got a badass subplot going there.

plus, imagine zoya spotting old friends and comrades amongst the starless. angst potential. also, yuri's treatment in the books pisses me off so much - lb wants us to see him as a foolish annoyance, but this kid literally marched the religious sect that he leads right up to the gates of os alta. now top that off with grisha powers (inferni would be cool) and you have a way more threatening character.

zoyalai. right, ok. what irks me about these two is that their so-called banter and pining go nowhere. we get some half-hearted justifications for them not being together, and the narrative completely overlooks zoya's comments about him in the trilogy. let's fix this.

maybe they could start off professional around each other, somewhat cold. until at some point, they begin an exclusively physical affair, just fwb and nothing more. i think this could work given the fact they're both flirty and materialistic. the stakes would be that if the court found out, their reputations would be significantly tarnished, yet neither are willing to stop. as they spend more time together, feelings blossom. they're no longer the demon king and squaller general to each other. they just want to be nikolai and zoya, yet both are too proud to make the first move. let the pining commence.

either that or give nikolai a new love interest. wasn't there a line in kos that joked that nikolai would be prone to falling in love with a palace maid? the potential spice of his love interest being someone with zero political standing, someone like dominik. a fellow pirate or even a starless member.

i don't even know what to say about nina. i was devastated over her treatment. there really do need to be more stories where a character who has lost a lover moves on and finds love again, but matthias is quite literally freshly buried when she meets her new boo. that's a major disservice to the potential of hanne's character as well. i'm kinda in favour of scrapping nina's whole plot. it would need a colossal amount of overhaul to work and even though i'm enjoying sharing my ideas, i don't have time to think about that.

same goes for isaac and mayu. either scrap it or give it the attention it needs.

i'm aware this is very kos-centric, but kos is the root of my issues and row is just an extension of that.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: no darkling return. no alina and mal. this story has been told and wrapped up. please don't cheapen it by going back and contradicting tgt. no gratuitous, shoehorned crow cameos either.

that's that about that, i guess!! i apologise for any spelling or grammatical errors, i wrote this rather quickly. i know this isn't gonna be for everyone. that's alright. i just ask people to civil about it and if discussion is going to be had, don't take things in bad faith. sorry anon this got long af.

24 notes · View notes