MASTERLIST
Last Updated: April 16, 2023
TANGLED: THE SERIES
Varian
TWILIGHT (2008)
Mal: Remember what I told you about true north? Cardinal north?
Alina: Of course. You were talking about us. About home. How you could always find it.
Mal: I don't feel it anymore. It left me as I died. Who I was. What I was.
Nikolai: Here's my lucky compass that I never part with, please take it
The Shadow and Bone showrunners were such cowards for not giving us the "You don't trust me to resist his charms?"/"I don't even trust myself" bit from the books. Without the context of book!Mal's jealousy, it would have to happen as part of Alina and Mal simply talking about how hot Nikolai is, leading directly to them jumping his bones at the earliest opportunity, and the showrunners clearly weren't brave enough to go there.
i think what enthralls me most about mal/alina/nikolai is that i don't THINK the polyamory was intentional at all. or at least not the specific polyamory i'm reading. like, i think the intent was to subvert the trope of an angry rebellious royal and an angry rebellious chosen one who refuse to form basic political alliances through marriage even though it just makes fucking sense. and then i think the writers' further intent was to distance mal and nikolai from their worst shitheadery in the books by uniting them thru a deep emotional bond and genuine respect and trust and care for each other. like. it's an arranged-marriage throuple that has a lot of potential for toxic misery and the writers wanted to sidestep that by going "okay, but maybe it's more interesting if they're all friends who love each other instead"
then the EXECUTION of that concept is like. not only are nikolai and mal so chill with the other dating their girlfriend that that Alone makes the polyamory pseudo-canon, but nikolai and mal's friendship is also -- apparently intentionally?? -- written with a SHITLOAD of parallels to nikolai and alina's relationship???
i think the intention in THAT is to reinforce how nikolai and alina have a strong non-romantic platonic partnership. because nikolai does the same things that he does with alina with mal, too! who, you know, is a man! and who is not nikolai's betrothed! see! everyone is such good friends!! :D
and so of course the way it reads onscreen to me, spiders georg polyamory kitkat, is just. nikolai has two hands. and is bisexual. and wants to crawl into bed with both alina and mal so bad it's fucking UNREAL,
they're perfect. polyamory rights.
Listen, I haven’t read the Shadow and Bone books and I’ve only seen the show once so I’m not going to write fic for it, BUT if I were to write one it would be about the obvious endgame ship which is Alina/Mal/Nikolai and it would go something like this:
Mal spends about a year at sea. Alina and Nikolai get together in the meantime but at the same time Mal’s absence makes it clear to both him and Alina that what they feel for each other is real. Alina isn’t sure how to resolve the situation without hurting one or both of them and breaking half of her own heart in the process, but once Mal gets back he’s immediately like “I left and lost my chance, you two fell in love, I get it, I’m stepping aside” while Nikolai is like “You’re childhood sweethearts, I’m not trying to compete with that, I get it, I’m stepping aside.”
And before Alina can jump in to suggest that maybe no one needs to step aside because she has two hands, Mal and Nikolai are in the middle of an almost-argument about which one of them is hotter and more deserving of Alina, both taking the other’s side. And as Alina watches them hurl compliments at each other while getting closer and closer until they are nearly chest to chest, memories replay in her mind and something finally clicks.
“Huh,” she says, realising that maybe no one’s heart needs to get broken after all.
Mal and Nikolai tear their eyes from each other’s lips to look at her.
“Sorry,” Alina says with a smirk, “don’t let me interrupt your flirting.”
Which finally wakes them up to how close they’re standing and what they’ve been saying, and they jump apart. Nikolai, who has been aware of his attraction for Mal since the moment Mal said “north is that way” but is convinced it’s one-sided, thinks he’s failed to keep his feelings in check and overstepped a boundary and starts apologising, he didn’t mean to make anyone uncomfortable, this was so inappropriate of him, it will never happen again, etc. etc.
Meanwhile Mal, who’s never even begun to process what he feels around Nikolai, is instinctively like “we’re not flirting” but Alina just raises her eyebrows at him and he realises, maybe they are. And he looks at Nikolai who’s still stumbling through what sounds like a love confession wrapped in an apology, and suddenly there’s only one thing he can do. He looks at Alina, who nods in encouragement, eyes shining, and then he grabs Nikolai’s face and shuts him up with a kiss.
And then the three of them live happily ever after, thank you goodbye.
Dean Winchester & hug dynamic analysis
I was thinking about how whenever Dean hugs someone he's almost always the one hugging the other and how this links to his psychological trauma of always being the caretaker of people, making himself bigger to protect them.
Because that's how Dean sees himself, as a shield for others, and then I thought about how Cas actually is the shield, and he's HIS SHIELD, specifically, the only one who's really there to protect HIM, which is why it hits so much when we see this:
The way Cas wraps his arms around him, trying to protect him with his whole body--that he'd use as a shield and give up in a second if he could spare him from any pain and save him.
(for context: Dean was about to go use the soul bomb on Amara there, it was a suicide mission)
Bobby is another one that hits, he hugs him as the big hugger because he's his father, he loves him and he's actually here to protect him (and Dean LETS him -barely, but he lets him *and Cas* - in a way that he doesn't let Sam)
I watched a compilation of Sam & Dean hugs to check if i was right about it, but it's almost always Dean the big hugger with Sam, except when he's about to die or Sam sees him alive again after losing him.
Even then, Dean mostly tries to hug Sam as the big hugger anyway, with at least one arm, like a way to comfort him, making him feel protected, like his body language is saying "I'm here, I'm okay, I'm still strong, i can still protect you" (because their real father failed and Dean thinks it's his job).
He rarely lets himself be the little one hugged with Sam, unless he's barely conscious. Which is why it kills me so much more now that in this moment (s14, when Dean was going to lock himself in the Ma'lak box cause he was possessed by Michael) and Sam has a desperate breakdown and punches him (to stop him) he forcefully hugs him as the little hugger, the way Dean always kept him, like a way of saying "I still need you to protect me, please don't do this to yourself".
In the scene below he gives Sam his blessing to do a dangerous (possibly suicidal) mission, and one of his arms is down, but the other one tries to stay up--he's forcing himself to do it and he struggles because he still wants to protect him, but (as the seasons progress) he slowly becomes more prone to let go.
So in this view the hug dynamic becomes an indicator of how Dean sees Sam (and himself) and his protector role, how adult and self sufficient he considers Sam, and how much he lets people around him take care of him, lowering his walls and letting himself be hugged.
This is also why i think hugs from characters like Garth or Charlie are so special, because they're just like us: they see Dean and they just know that he needs to be hugged a lot, and that he's not used to it, so they just go for it-- and it's so normal and kind and spontaneous that Dean's just not used to it-- he doesn't know how to respond (especially with Garth, at the beginning, but as the seasons progress, he learns to, and he even initiates the hug eventually).
I love the hugs where they're 50/50 (one arm up, one arm down both), feels like they're equals, both taking care of each other. I feel like with Sam and Dean, this indicates a healthier dynamic, because Dean lets go a little of the role that was imposed to him and manages to see Sam as the strong individual that he is. But the same applies to 50/50 hugs with other characters, like with Cas, where I feel like it testifies how equals they feel in terms of being fighters, there's a show of respect of each other's strength that transpires by the gesture (which is even more astounding considering that Cas is literally a powerful angel).
And just to end on a destiel note, I'd like to note the possessiveness and protectiveness of Dean (rightfully so) whenever he finds Cas after he thought he had lost him, and how that translates into his body/hug language:
cipher-fresh