#Siege and storm spoilers

[that-sweet-thief]

just finished binge-watching season 2 of shadow and bone. my thoughts are mostly in disarray but the cringe is real.

this was an off-paced, haphazard fanfiction. it'd be just fine if the writers weren't paid for it but they actually are, so it's just... wow. I'm at best mediocre when writing in english and i reckon even i would do a better job of writing dialogue.

anyway, here's a list of my thoughts on the show, though it's more of a word vomit than a comprehensive series review:

no ivan or fedyor. immediate downvote for that alone. ivan should've survived so we could have a heartbreaking moment between him and fedyor across the two sides of the battlefield. i guess they thought there were too many characters and couples to juggle already. or maybe the actors weren't available, who knows.

costume design took a surprising turn for the worse: for example, nina's and zoya's dresses were eyesores. how anyone could make these two very attractive women look that frumpy i've no idea but they've managed. i liked sankta neyar's costume, sturmhond's coat aaand that's about it.

the settings were more varied, so glad we've seen a little of bhez ju. the introductory map-to-location shots were very helpful for people who haven't read the books, namely my gf who fell asleep halfway through the show. also, if the music had any tracks that weren't already from the first season i'll be incredibly surprised, it's that repetitive.

they've messed up nikolai as a character mainly because the actor misunderstood his assignment, though i don't know what else he could've done with the mess he was given. while he's still sympathetic, lovely and witty, paddy's nikolai thinks of sturmhond as just another disguise, rather than who he really is, to the point of gifting said disguise to mal. that's irreconcilable with my understanding of nikolai, whose real mask is the bastard prince.

tamar & tolya were better realised than expected. along with the exclusion of the soldat sol cult, their zealotry's scrapped which is a big win for them. i enjoyed their scenes, great casting too. though, as an ardent kanej fan, i cannot in good conscience support the blink-and-you'll-miss-it tolya/inej moment. tamar/nadia had maybe a minute of screen time but better than nothing.

sankta neyar was a pleasant surprise, great idea to show how powerful durasts can also be. people often disregard materialki so this was refreshing. what i liked about her is how formal, collected, old-fashioned she both appeared and acted, as if her manners and speech style were leftover from a few centuries ago, kudos to her actor tuyen do.

the crows' arc was... lacking in some way. maybe it's because pekka rollins' attitude towards kaz and his group is very different than how it was established in the books, here he was way too proactive and less secure in his position in ketterdam for some reason; anyway rollins' framing of the crows felt off to me.

the crows' character dynamics are interesting and the saving grace of the show, all kanej and wesper scenes were great. seriously, the tension of kanej & cuteness of wesper nearly destroyed me.

they did helnik dirty, of course, but that was a given.

freddy carter outperformed everyone this season, i really think out of all of them he's given the best performance, sometimes even better than ben barnes and that's practically heresy coming from me, his devoted fan since ages ago when i first saw narnia.

i kinda dig that they brought in a tidemaker (fruszi) who's practically an early version of zoya for the darkling's side but her death felt cheap. i mean, the crows arriving to help out nikolai and his team at the very last second was already eye roll inducing, but then nikolai shoots her in the neck? cheap. also, if she and zoya came to face off that'd be interesting since they share so many similarities. i personally don't think it will but if the series continued along with the darkling's canon resurrection, i wish she'd lived and replaced elizaveta, she certainly seemed devoted enough.

david and genya made me cry. that's all i have to say on them.

baghra... where do i even start with her? baghra's nonchalance, her one-eighty about deciding to help alina find more amplifiers is stark raving bonkers imho. yet at least most of her scenes weren't as bad as they could've been, her proving to mal he was the firebird and her saving genya as well as alina actually came across better than the ultra passive, constantly berating version in the books. her death felt less dramatic but more spiteful, though aleksander's reaction to her death was appropriately heartbreaking. ben & zoe sold it so well, my eyes actually welled up.

speaking of sasha, his death is soooo badly executed, it's impossible not to be pissed off at the way they filmed it. even the books were more sympathetic to his demise and alina herself showed much more empathy for him at the end. it's genuinely disturbing how they framed it, makes alina seem more like a villain than the reluctant hero she used to be. i guess it fits with the surprise ending: how she kinda becomes what she sought to destroy, poetic irony and all, but still...

aleksander's whole arc this season makes him seem more desperate and pathetic and so, less of a tyrant: he doesn't even take control of the country or more than a small group of grisha let alone become tsar, instead the apparat rules over ravka on behalf of the lantsovs till nikolai is coronated. he and his people constantly lose to some clever last minute thwarting by alina's allies. the only thing scary about him is the nichevo'ya, the shadow monsters, which in the books are entirely under his control and that of course makes it all the more terrifying. here though, sick and tired and dying, he's merely desperate and fearful. the lack of wins on aleksandr's part really defeats the purpose of the writers' continuous attempts at making him simply the most terrible, horrifying and supreme villain of gregverse.

nope, can't get over it, aleksander practically died in her arms in the books, here she just looks down at him like she's the villain. i guess she now is. oh and mal's retort to sasha about dying in her arms was somehow a foreshadowing, see, but sasha doesn't get that because he's evil, see? gosh, so patronising.

since they've constantly emphasised this season how it was the fold's and thus sasha's fault that grisha were persecuted (not that this explains the ceaseless mistreatment, endangerment and more often death that grisha face everywhere they go, of course, nor does it explain his backstory) i gathered they'd go for a retcon but i didn't imagine they'd exonerate baghra, the apparat and tie the border wars with shu han and fjerda to the fold's existence entirely. the reason the war broke out in the first place was because those countries' fundamental approach to grisha was to kill them or worse. that is what grisha persecution meant. and now... what, the war is over, just like that? i have no words.

also, the exclusion of the "don't let me be alone" line. now that I think about it, those writers should be fed to nichevo'ya.

alina, alina, alina... sure, she's a self-insert, so her motivations don't make sense anyway, but as sweet as jessie is and how hard she tries, show!alina is now an equally awful mess as book!alina. the two things i liked about her this season were her manipulation attempt through the tether and the ending where she goes a bit darkling. the latter, i really like. i wrote a fragment of a power reversal fic before but never put it up, might just do that now.

i'll admit: it's rather funny how mal dumps alina after losing his amplification because he doesn't feel the same way anymore. he doesn't know if it was him being an amplifier that made them love one another. see how easily he turns away from alina? if i were aleksander, I'd be laughing at her from the grave.

#shadow and bone #shadow and bone spoilers #season 2 shadow and bone #season 2 spoilers #the grisha trilogy #book spoilers #siege and storm spoilers #ruin and rising spoilers #kind of a review #kind of a rant #mostly word vomit #grishaverse #pro darkling #anti baghra #make it make sense #at least the ending is better #aside from the way aleksander dies #anti s&b writers

[lilisouless]

Spoilers under the cut

Guys, it´s two days away before he is a gonner

RIP. I never actually cared aobut the book counterpart (not that i didn't liked him, i just didn't really remembered him) but this one will be missed

#sab spoilers #siege and storm spoilers #not tagging the character because i am NOT dumb #shadow and bone #grisha trilogy #grishaverse spoilers #grishaverse netflix #sab netflixs #shadow and bone spoilers

[quitschekaetzchendebugging]

#my art #grishaverse #genya safin #alina starkov #mal oretsev #sea snake #fanart #quitschekaetchzenart #baghra morozova #grishaverse spoilers #ruin and rising #ruin and rising spoilers #siege and storm #traditional art #shadow and bone #shadow and bone spoilers #siege and storm spoilers

[sleepless-crows]

made a gif based on a post i made because i think people should be reminded of the things the darkling does

#grishaverse #shadow and bone #siege and storm #genya safin #the darkling #shadow and bone spoilers #sab spoilers #siege and storm spoilers #my edits #sleepless-crows #sabedit #shadowandboneedit #shadowandbonecentral

[croptopscout]

Please stop beautifying mutilated characters

TW: major spoilers for the Shadow and Bone trilogy (post Siege & Storm/book 2) and minor spoilers for Sally Face

Very random rant about smth that’s been bothering me for a while.

Why can’t people just let “disfigured” (I looked for a different word that explains what exactly I mean and couldn’t find it, but I’m aware that it’s not okay to say that about someone, I’m just trying to express what I mean as specifically as possible) be “disfigured”???!!

I’m so tired of seeing people draw characters like Sal Fisher and Genya Safin as just pretty faces with a couple scars. Can we be for real for 2 fucking seconds? I don’t wanna put any of the fanart I’m talking about in this post because I don’t wanna call out any artist in particular, I’m sure most, if not all, mean well doing this, I just think it’s a little fucked.

Sal’s face was messed up when he was a kid. Canonically a whole piece of his jaw is missing. The cartilage of his nose is at least partially missing. He is not a pretty anime boy with a few lines on his face. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. That’s doesn’t make him a better or a worse person, it’s just a fact about his appearance. It says absolutely nothing about who he is but it is an important part of his character and definitely impacts his actions and personality.

When Alina first sees Genya after what happened to her, this is how she’s described (literally copied and pasted from the fucking book)

“It was not Baghra. I didn’t know what it was. The bites were everywhere, raised black ridges of flesh, twisting lumps of tissue that could never be healed, not by Grisha hand or by any other, the unmistakable marks of the nichevo’ya. Then I saw the faded flame of her hair, the lovely amber hue of her one remaining eye.”

She looks so different that Alina doesn’t recognize her. At first she describes her as a “what”, because that’s how affected her appearance was by that happened to her. So you’re gonna sit here and tell me that it’s perfectly sensible to draw her (post nichevo’ya) exactly the same as before but with a cute little eyepatch and a few lines over her face? Stop trying to beautify characters that have had accidents like this. They’re not conventionally pretty and that’s not a fucking character flaw.

I absolutely hate policing people’s art. Draw thin characters fat, give able bodied character disabilities if you want, make characters black or Asian or whatever you want, I’m all for representation, but please don’t erase this important part of who they are. Because it is an important part of who they are. It impacts so much of their lives in canon. And we can still love them exactly how they look. We should still love them exactly how they look, without trying to erase these horrible things that happened to them.

I chose to focus on these two characters in particular because they’re the ones I’ve seen this being done to the most, but this is true for any characters who have suffered through horrible things that heavily changed their appearance.

And before someone comments on this saying that it’s just fictional characters and all that bullshit, I’m well aware. I’m also well aware that this post is not gonna change jack shit and people are still gonna draw Genya and Sal and any other characters who don’t look “normal” as pretty, conventional faces and there’s nothing I can do about that. I have no intention of fighting with any artist that chooses to do this. I’m just asking that if you are one of the people who choose to erase these kind of physical characteristics about these characters, that you ask yourself why you feel the need to do it. If you like the character enough to want to draw them, why can’t you actually like them how they are? If you read all this and still don’t give a shit, good for you, that’s not my business. I just thought it was worth bringing this up.

Anyways, if anyone wants to actually have a discussion about this I’ll be happy to, this has just been bothering me for a long time and I felt like ranting about it. Hopefully at least one person actually stops to thinks because of this post. Maybe no one will. That’s okay.

If you have had an accident that left your appearance similar to one of these characters, I hope you can still see representation in them, no matter how their appearance is treated by the fandom, and I hope you know that you are worthy of love no matter what you look like.

#rant #tw mutilation #grishaverse spoilers #siege and storm spoilers #genya safin #ruin and rising #the darkling #leigh bardugo #discourse #fanart discourse #sal fisher #sally face

[fanoffandom]

Finished reading the Grishaverse trilogy for the first time and here are my decade-late-to-the-party hot takes:

1. Mal does not deserve the hate I’ve seen him get from the fandom.  Almost all of his actions are perfectly understandable, even the negative ones.

2. Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising are WAY BETTER BOOKS than Shadow and Bone. Also Nikolai, Genya, and Zoya are carrying this story and I love them.

3. In that vein I don’t feel like the little love triangle between Mal/Alina/the Darkling really works in Shadow and Bone, not until that mental connection between Alina and the Darkling is established.  That scene in Siege and Storm where he was just sitting in the church STARING at her while she was talking to Mal and she was the only one who could see him and she thought she was slowly going insane?!?!? It creeped me out and I loved it

4. I...am still not too sure how I feel about the ending.  They get to be normal people, but they’re also missing something vital that they were born with.  No winning without a sacrifice I guess.  But...I don’t know.  I just don’t know.  

#book tag #gonna actually start a book tag for real I think #shadow and bone #grishaverse #siege and storm #ruin and rising #shadow and bone spoilers #siege and storm spoilers #ruin and rising spoilers #I tried to be as vague as possible about the ending of the series #and I've tagged the hell out of this post so don't come for me #also hot damn ruin and rising was published in like 2014

[inthecaseofgaaraofthesand]

Siege and Storm, 254, 255

I'm currently losing my mind what the fRICK

#siege and storm #Siege and storm spoilers #Idk if I should tag it as spoilers bc the books are old but I'm going to anyways #The way I gasped #There's a lot going on here #I really did not expect Baghra's EYES TO BE MISSING #I just #Insane #What's going on 😭😭😭 #I need to sleep but oh my gosh #baghra morozova #alina starkov #grace's rambling

[darklinalesbian]

Honestly that scene in the end of s&s where the darkling offers alina to join him and she pretends to accept just so she can use his merzost against him in the same way he used her powers against her?? "You'll kill us both" "Yes"?? Peak romance.

#i am losing my hopes for s2 and going insane at the same time #is it too much to ask for some angst #siege and storm spoilers #i guess #darklina #alina starkov #aleksander morozova #the darkling #shadow and bone #mine

[lpa6zn]

I suddenly remembered the moment in Siege and Storm when Alina cuts a hole in the roof of the little palace with The Cut.

#It is the scene number 83929221938 that I would have liked to see in the season 2😞 #shadow and bone #grishaverse #alina starvok #malyen oretsev #shadow and bone s2 #jessie mei li #archie renaux #siege and storm spoilers #little palace #the grisha trilogy

[jazzkrebber]

do you ever think about how they went from Matthias dreaming of Nina again to Nina only seeing Matthias in her dreams

#🚨 crooked kingdom spoilers 🚨 #i think a lot about them #i also think a lot about how many posts i start with do you ever think about #scroll through my page and you'll find so many 😭 #shadow and bone #six of crows #grishaverse #crooked kingdom #ruin and rising #siege and storm #helnik #matthias helvar #nina zenik #leigh bardugo #wesper #kanej #wylan hendriks #jesper fahey #wylan van eck #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #save shadow and bone #six of crows spin off #renew shadow and bone #malina #zoyalai #genyalina #safyk #zoyalina

[myfriendscallmeraba]

Ah the ending.

Alina keeping all her power and not sun summoners popping up everywhere? Perfect

Alina getting all power hungry and getting a bit of shadow powers cuz balance is needed? Perfect

Alina not living on a farm with no purpose after she built it throughout 3 books? Perfect

Alina almost becoming queen? Perfect

Mal setting off on a boat while they both find themselves without each other before they(probably) come back to each other and be endgame? Perfect

Them making mal generally better and making me finally see a bit potential in Malina? Great(tho I’m still here for single powerful Alina)

#I clearly love the change from the sab book ending #and no I will not apologise for it #alina starkov #mal oretsev #shadow and bone #malina #shadow and bone spoilers #sab season 2 #sab spoilers #ruin and rising #siege and storm #nikolai lantsov

[lalalalooost]

I'm past the stage of shipping Alina with Nikolai but can we talk about that scene in Ruin and Rising when Nikolai still offered Alina to be his queen knowing she already lost her powers. I think that's so pure and I love Nikolai more for that. I love how their relationship developed throughout the series.

He leaned back. “We were friends, weren’t we? Not just allies?”

“Don’t be an ass, Nikolai. We are friends.”

#shadow and bone #siege and storm #ruin and rising #alina starkov #nikolai lantsov #alina x nikolai #nikolai x reader #the grisha trilogy #grishaverse #sab spoilers #books #leigh bardugo

[lilisouless]

NO, WAIT IT´S NIKOLAI!

SPOILERS

THE DARKLING IS TURNING HIM INTO THE MONSTER AT HIS BIRTHDAY PARTY DURING HIS ATTACK AT OS ALTA! ITS HAPPENING EARLIER!THATS WHY MARIE DIED EARLY! AND WHY THERE IS NO SERGEI!

#it´s delusional time! #nikolai lantsov #ruin and rising spoilers #siege and storm spoilers #ruin and rising #siege and storm #shadow and bone season 2 #shadow and bone netflix #THAT would be a worthy compression #netflix shadow and bone #leigh bardugo

[edanfig]

I will be the first to say that the Grishaverse has its flaws. There are many problems with it but my main criticism is with the fandom. Especially the ones on booktok/bookstagram that always are like “my least favorites trope is when the fem!mc loses her powers in the end” and I look in the comments and see people saying “Omg like Alina”.

It doesn’t make any sense to me, I feel like I’ve seen that trope in less than 5 books, but maybe I’m wrong. However, Alina losing her power totally makes sense in the book. She doesn’t even want the power, her whole thought process is “means justify the end”. She says multiple times after the first few chapters in the Little Palace that she doesn’t like being a Grisha. It wasn’t healthy for her and she wasn’t thriving; hell, the people there didn’t even like her. Alina gathered all the power from the amplifiers to take down the Darkling, and it was said multiple times by her mentors that the power she was gaining was unnatural.

Her gathering of the amplifiers was breaking the natural order of things and creating rifts that we later see in KoS/RoW. Alina’s powers wiping themselves out after she strained herself and fixing the problem that was breaking the natural order makes so much sense. Her powers getting rid of themselves was restoring the world to what it was supposed to be.

Also people act like Alina was upset that she lost her power, and while I think she mourned the power she’d gained in that time, she wasn’t too sad. She enjoyed it because she could live a peaceful life with Mal, doing what she wanted, free from the constraints and stress from politics and dealing with life and death.

Certain people were just completely making things up about how Alina was feeling, forgetting she was a child who liked the idea of being a Grisha. After she got a taste of what it was like, and the stress (mental and physical) that came with it, she hated it. She hated when she became a saint because people were treating her like a thing not a person. Alina did everything she did to do what was right and when she was done went to the peaceful life she craved with Mal. And for some reason people interpret this as “Leigh didn’t want Alina to be happy” when you can clearly see she’s happier living a quiet life.

#shadow and bone #sab #alina starkov #sankta alina #media literacy where #mal oretsev #shadow and bone books #siege and storm #ruin and rising #sab spoilers

[sleepless-crows]

so we know what that line meant now right. the third amplifier.

#grishaverse #shadow and bone #alina starkov #malyen oretsev #shadow and bone spoilers #siege and storm spoilers #ruin and rising spoilers

[uku-lelevillain]

episode 3 was iconic

******SPOILERS*******

we got nikolai’s identity reveal like the books

we got alina punching nikolai

then we had the absolute wesper gem of “when i woke up you were gone” + love at first sight when wylan playing the piano

immediately followed by kaz telling inej about his backstory and some crumbs of THE BATHROOM SCENE EXCUSE ME WHAT

and right after that the Dregs fight scene with kaz wacking people with his cane left and right

it had iconic moments from siege and storm, the best scenes from crooked kingdom AND added the wesper bonus like what did we do to deserve such a well written episode

#shadow and bone spoilers #shadow and bone #shadow and bone season 2 #the crows #siege and storm #alina starkov #nikolai lantsov #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #wylan van eyck #jesper fahey #kanej #wesper