fine, make me a darklina shipper.

@missumaru's s&b sideblog :)

[zoya-nazyalenskys-archive]

insp.

[greensaplinggrace]

“You can have everything You want, everything You desire,” he says. “You could have every shadow and every shred of darkness, protecting the innocent from every vile, wretched fool that cowers in caves and beneath the safety of his sheets. You could have it all, if You have me.” - At the Foot of Her Altar

[youngwoochoo]

LOCKWOOD & CO. (2023 — ) SHADOW AND BONE (2021 — )

[blessyouhawkeye]

shadow and bone is like. it's the worst show i've ever seen it's the best show i've even seen it's a bad adaptation it's fanfiction with a netflix budget it's better than i expected it's worse than i wanted it's pure fan service the acting is phenomenal the writing is terrible and the thing is it's all of these things. but also it's none of these things because most importantly shadow and bone is a vessel for freddy carter to give the performance of a lifetime

[butter-week]

to me, them fucking over the crows' storyline is karma for the soc fans that went "how dare they make shadow and bone about the shadow and bone trilogy" and "hope they rush alina's story in s2 so we can finally get six of crows". y'all laughed when we got upset that they ruined the grisha trilogy. hope your expensive live action fanfiction was worth it

[shimmertrapped]

i really loved the way Amita delivered the ‘I will have you without armor’ line, i always read it as kind of harsh in the book but she said it so tenderly i was like oh??? 🥺

[avengers-rule103]

can i just say, i am loving the parallel of the darkling threating alina telling her he'll strip away all that she loves and cares about until there's nothing but him, followed by this lady (i'm gonna be honest i've already forgotten her name) talking about how she's been alive for 400 years and has had everyone she loves die, taken by time. it just really hanmers home how little alina understands about what's going on. she's too young, she hasn't lived through it yet like this lady has, like the darkling has. he threatens it because that's what he's been through already time and time again and he's still hurting. he wanted to open himself up, to her, to love, dreamed they could work together. end grisha oppression and persecution and neither of them would have to continue losing people.

[rosesfox]

(shadow and bone season two spoilers!!!!!!!!!!)

i, as a stan of zoya and zoyalai, couldn’t have hated this ridiculous ending more. i don’t know how they’re going to separate nikolina, make zoya stand out as a general and nikolai’s main and truest love interest. the way it looks, even if they were to adapt kos and row, it would look like zoya is a replacement for alina. they took the crumbs they could have from zoyalai and still didn’t add, even knowing that the endgame is zoyalai and that zoya is the one who will become queen. it’s just awful, and i really hated it.

nikolai never loved alina, alina never wanted to be with nikolai and always saw him as a friend, mal would never leave alina lol and most important of all zoya was the first person nikolai loved and chose for himself beyond of his duty as monarch.

they changed crucial things for the continuity of the story, there is no opening for even more of the crows (since crooked kingdom was poorly adapted) and kos and row are beyond my imagination. that was so bad. i think overall they managed to spoil all the characters, but i as stan da zoya am particularly enraged.

and also, my god, the changes with nikolai! they really didn’t understand the importance of the sturmhond to him.

[xalonelydreamerx]

I think I'm gonna write an analysis as soon as I finish rereading the trilogy but yeah s2 was fucking terrible.

I've seen many people saying they're happy about Alina, and while yes, I'm glad she didn't lose her powers and didn't end up with Mal, there are so much bigger problems with this season

Aside the costume still looking bad, pacing being all over the place because there are simply too many characters and the annoying repentance of the flashbacks, Alina comes as extremely annoying, stuck up, tone deaf and overall a bitch.

Unlike some, I do love book!Alina because she's a very flawed character but lots of her mistakes actually do make sense if you're able to let go of the grudge that comes from reading a YA 2010 book.

Show! Alina was intentionally supposed to be portrayed as strong, bold, confident and smart since s1. She's not supposed to be naive, ignorant, selfish and emotional like book!Alina but somehow she ends up coming across as so much worse.

The Darkling is no better. He comes off as extremely pathetic. He already was in s1, but I was hoping he was gonna have an arc in this season and become more like his canon self. Sadly, that wasn't meant to be.

Show!Darkling has no personality other than wanting Alina in such a desperate way that is hard to look at. I know the girlies gash over him being a ✨ simp ✨ but there's a difference between pathetic (affectionate) and pathetic (degoratory). He wants to keep the grisha safe but even that a aspect suffers from a very detrimental alteration they did on the show which I will now mention.

Apparently, grisha aren't the oppressed group we know in canon. On no, the season hits you with the hammer about how it's the fold and everything that happened in s1 that made everybody turn against grisha. Not that they've been capturing them, enslaving them and burning them for hundred of years, na-ah.

I have no comment on the crows since I hardly ever cared for them. Some scenes were good, but they suffered with how much the story was rushed.

The ending was shit, because while it's cool that alina kept her powers and an arc of her becoming basically a new antagonist is interesting on paper, it doesn't work here because it wasn't built up well and as I mentioned Alina came off as incredible unlikable and darklina was extremely one-sided.

The script was very poor and this isn't a hate towards the actors because they don't really have any control of it.

While I'll continue shipping darklina they were both done very dirty because they were ooc since the first season and the second one reduced them both to something beyond recognition.

[elena-gilbert]

Shadow and Bone 1.07 // The Rings of Power 1.08

[marvelmusing]

Okay so the tether scenes are literally going to end me

[alinaastarkov]

I promised that you and I would change the world...

[ragingstillness]

Reading Ben’s new analysis of the Darkling’s character and it’s like deja vu for Tom Hiddleston’s analysis of Loki.

Two actors who understand their characters better than anyone, horrendously underutilized, and having to provide depth to the characters through every microexpression they can fit in because the writers, directors, producers, everyone else certainly isn’t doing it.

Also, that analysis of the Darkling was so accurate it took my breath away. What I feel the show sometimes and the books all the time forget is that the Darkling didn’t start off evil. He didn’t start off violent, diametrically opposed to Alina’s point of view. He started off as her. He became this.

“School her in cynicism?” “Watch the people you love die over and over?” This is literally what made him this way. This is how he got from where she is to where he is.

There’s a section I believe in the books but it may also be in the show where Alina essentially scolds the Darkling about his violent and extreme tendencies and suggests he try diplomacy and his reaction is an exhausted “how many times do you think I’ve tried that?”

He’s exhausted other options. He’s lived so long he thinks every manner of person is going to act exactly the same. He’s not truly seeing individuals anymore, only archetypes, i.e. the lecherous king, the bigoted nobles, the superstitious commoners. And why shouldn’t he think of them this way? History has shown him to be right with few anomalies.

And once he lost hope why would he risk it all on the idea that maybe just maybe some people might be different? He has too much to lose to take that chance. He doesn’t have the ability to get that hope back because he’s too frightened of the possible consequences and rightfully so.

So Ben is absolutely correct, the Darkling sees Alina as someone he used to be. And he’s trying to teach her the lessons he feels he’s learned so that she won’t make the same mistakes and have to go through the same pain to figure out what he already knows. It’s much more tragic and complicated than, he’s evil, she’s not.

But that’s what you get when your shitty source material creates a vibrant political landscape and uses it as a background for a cheesy romcom.

[levixlumine]

“Redemption,“ he murmured. "Salvation. Penance. My mother’s quaint ideas. Perhaps I should have paid closer attention.”

Siege and Storm

[butter-week]

how are they going to fit two books and the crows in eight episodes. we are going to lose so much character and relationship development for sab.

i love the crows, but a part of me still wishes this was solely sab. "ok but soc was the best part of s1" i dont care!!!!! shadow and bone is supposed to center on alina!!!!! sab as a trilogy is underdeveloped enough, the netflix series shouldve been a chance for them to really flesh out the story and breathe in some life into it. everything is being so rushed, and i feel like part of it is because they want to get to the crows faster. at the cost of alina's story. both should get the chance to shine on their own, but i mean this especially for sab. mixing the stories, when soc has always been the more popular part of the grishaverse, doesn't allow alina's story to be explored or appreciated as it should be.

i still think the crows should have been an unexpected cameo, right before confirming a spin off series.

[blues-valentine]

Now that I’m pass the trailers excitement I am sorry but I am still pretty pissed that they’re mixing Siege and Storm with Ruin and Rising and this will only result in a mess and a lot of characters arcs thrown out of the window. The trailer is a bit too messy.

Siege and Storm takes on Alina slowing getting addicted to power and the conflicts this has with her humanity and relationship with Mal. It takes us to Alina’s mental battle and the torment Darkling continues to put on her. It tackles Alina’s religious status and political. The trailer does not seem to mention anything regardless Alina’s status as a Saint and this is a conflict with my favorite part of Tolya and Tamar’s story line — their devotion to Alina.

It doesn’t seem like they tackle Mal’s journey on the second book which is so important for him as a character because then it makes sense why he is so unaffected by the idea of dying on R&R. Mal’s deals with PTSD, depression and alcoholism. He deals with the idea of losing Alina to the point that his ultimate sacrifice is for her and not for anything else and in general so many interesting issues that needed to exist for his relationship with Alina to get as strong.

Nikolai has a very long and complex political backstory that should take its time to develop. Where’s Vasily? The party at the end of book 2 that is literally crucial? This with Tolya and Tamar and why they’re so loyal to Alina’s cause. It shouldn’t be rushed.

Baghra also telling Alina to go after the amplifiers? This must be an illusion because I know that’s not the same Baghra that was so against the idea of looking for them.

I’m nervous about the crows involvement in the plot because is so crowded already so when will we be seeing their actual arc. It feels overcrowded. The trailer feels like it’s entirely Ruin and Rising and this is a problem. To me, the show should’ve focused on season 2 for Book 2 and season 3 for Book 3 while working towards the six of crows spin off but Netflix seems desperate to cancel shows.

My expectations aren’t that high so let’s see.

[stromuprisahat]

On Darkling's death in Ruin and Rising

How long does whole TGT last? A year? Two?

It starts with the Darkling desperate, Ravka in shambles, position of Grisha unsustainable. Why else would he put all his money on a girl he barely knows? A girl, who’s never interested in anything around her. A girl, who’s more than willing to jump ship as soon as an opportunity arises?!

He gambles, miscalculates, survives certain death by ripping away parts of his being, is betrayed again (and again)… Takes the position he needs to be able to direct his people out of the shitstorm they’re in, all the while being generally distrusted or outright hated.

He’s losing supporters left and right. Death, desertion, stupid fucking religious cult of Effortless Saint… His abusive mother- his sole lifelong companion (she made sure of that)- commits pretty performative suicide right in front of him. The final fuck you, the very last wound she could inflict.

He cracks again and again, always keeps going.

But in the Fold? Centuries of planning, loss, suffering and it’s all been for NOTHING. His hands are empty, the foolish hope for company- NOT EVEN LOVE!- gone. There’s nothing left. Not for him, not for his people. He gives up at last.

As @darkestelemental616 said,

TGT is a tragedy following Aleksander’s slow descent into madness.

All the worse when you realize how much he overcame before, and how little did Alina know or understand. It would hit differently if his doom proved to be some decades old nemesis, or someone, who’d destroy him for some higher goal, not just “The Darkling evil and I want to be left alone.”.

“In this moment he was just a boy -  a boy, who wanted to make the world a place to live without fear.”

Even in his death, LB wanted us to see him as powerful (and power hungry), no matter how powerless he’s actually been.