#not anti s&b

[sixofbabycrows]

really speaks volumes

#shadow and bone #six of crows #s&b spoilers #anti shadow and bone

[theweeklydiscourse]

My reasons for disliking the Shadow and Bone Netflix adaptations had very little to do with its “book accuracy” and had more to do with it being a terrible adaptation. In fact, I would’ve preferred if the writers had taken some liberties and revised certain flaws of the original trilogy to create a more compelling narrative.

However, they instead made superficial changes that added little to the value of the show and were bandaid solutions to deeper problems with the source material. They didn’t expand on the original story, they only narrowed the scope. This, was its ultimate flaw that ended up culminating in a watered down version of what we once knew.

For example, the rehabilitation of Mal’s image seemed agreeable initially, but harmed the story in the long-run. The writers understood that book!Mal was disliked, but instead of re-examining that character and expanding (and perhaps improving) his arc, they refashioned him into a boring and frictionless character that offered little to the emotional stakes of the story. This choice, was a prime example of the dilution of the characters and story for the adaptation that ended up creating a weaker experience altogether.

The girlbossification of Alina, the lobotomizing of the Darkling to make it easier for the heroes to defeat him, cramming the Crows into a plot that didn’t concern them, blaming Grisha persecution on the Darkling, making Zoya a racist/the Darkling’s side chick, all of those idiotic flashbacks, were symptomatic of the writers inability to take risks.

#lb critical #shadow and bone #the darkling #alina starkov #s&b critical #s&b netflix #s&b salt #darklina #aleksander morovoza #anti leigh bardugo #zoya nazyanelsky #six of crows #malyen oretsev #netflix

[thee-radio-host-is-a-kookaburra]

#s&b art #max squawks #exclusionism #queer discourse #discourse #critinclus #inclusionism #inclusionist #anti transmed #anti bab #anti exclusionist #anti exclus #aphobia #panphobia #enbyphobia #exorsexism #mspec lesbian #lesboy

[stromuprisahat]

Isn’t the status of Grisha much worse after TGT. How are the Righteous Gang claiming to be victors/heroes who made others lives better. From my pov, grisha are much worse off while the otkazatsya are in status quo. Also what was wrong with the grisha coming to LP to live. From the books, it seems that none of them had any connection to their parents/relatives. If so that can also mean that their family did not care enough to reach out to them after they left.

Or did the Darkling ban all communications.

I’m sure the Righteous Gang think that all the cons of their dumb decisions are in fact the Darklings fault. You know because he did this or he did that. They do bot think for a single moment that he was the only one doing anything for them. While the soldat sol (shouldn’t they have been doing some charity work in name of their Saint?) and all other grisha did not lift a single finger to elevate the position of grisha in Ravka through ANY means.

Ironically, the Gang's decision to abolish Grisha draft should serve to further alienate Ravkan commoners and destabilize Nikolai's reign.

"... His serfs will get a taste of money and education and start thinking about building lives and businesses of their own instead of praying for their master’s patronage. ... "

King of Scars- Chapter 11

Nikolai had abolished the practice of separating Grisha from their parents. There was no mandatory draft to pull children from their homes.

Rule of Wolves- Chapter 9

The fact they aren't able to offer protection to any Grisha in Ravka, therefore hardly to children scattered all over the country, AND there's no system of home education, therefore these children might either hurt someone by accident or suffer from wasting sickness, aside...

This should be a gigantic legal issue.

(Although there's plenty of questions regarding servitude in general.)

Pre-KoS Grisha automatically became serfs. Their families were compensated financially.

Let's say Grisha are no longer required to move to Little Palace, otherwise everything stays the same. Are there lists of Grisha serfs to keep track of them? And how do they serve? Why should a family that keeps the amount of pairs of working hands get any money? Does it mean that a family of free- albeit poor- peasants, suddenly include a child serf with obligations of their own? Do these "free-range" serfs get personal assignments? That sounds like a whole lot of extra bureaucracy.

The other option is much more disasterous. If Grisha are no longer serfs, there's no reason to pay their families. They should be recorded the same way other free Ravkans are, and these records don't seem to be particularly meticulous:

Another [Ravkan Grisha] had been hidden in a root cellar when the Grisha Examiners arrived to test her. “My mother told them I’d been killed by the fever that had swept through our village the previous spring,” the Tidemaker said. “The neighbors cut my hair and passed me off as their dead otkazat’sya son until I was old enough to leave.”

Siege and Storm- Chapter 7

A year here, a year there... who'll know if the missing Grisha moved away, died or got kidnapped? But don't worry, the worst is yet to come- otkazat'sya (serfs). Why are Grisha freed as soon as three of theirs start whispering their advices into young King's ear (One of them rumoured to be his mistress to boot!), while common Ravkans keep bending their backs under nobility's jeweled slippers!

This is a starving, war-torn country, through which a wave of pogroms swept only a few years back! The hatred won't disappear only because a dead Saint allegedly appointed three of Grisha to what exactly? Represent? Or rule in the puppet-King's stead?

Sure, Nikolai's (strange, innovatory) reforms lead to more food for the poor... BUT- serfs are still property of their owners, unlike Grisha. West was somehow forced to remain with the East- feeding them, losing money to them. Nobles lost some privilages and whoever's not a complete baffoon will figure out they're losing power. Church should be pissed, because their leader got deposed, religious cult with Crown-appointed head took over and Nikolai cut their incomes too! Anyone even slightly distrustful towards Grisha- and that means all through Ravkan social strata- has every reason to believe they are running the country, which no longer means one black boogeyman, but a Suli whore with the King-killer.

_____

Members of Second Army weren't discouraged from staying in touch with their families, quite contrary. To make it more... well, to make it more KoS-ish, we get some specific data from Zoya:

She’d written every week to her aunt and every week received a long, newsy letter back with drawings of chickens in the corners and tales of the interesting traders who came through Novokribirsk.

King of Scars- Chapter 25

Ivan doesn't mention his family in present time, but I'd like to imagine he used to visit his widowed, almost childless mother until she died of old age.

_____

The only reason all those barely adult Grisha are even theoretically allowed to be teenagers, is that they're safe enough, thanks to Aleksander's work.

He was thirteen, but he’d had a hundred names, a new one for every town, camp, and city ... He would have lived next door to a garbage gully if it meant a roof over his head, hot meals, waking up in the same room every morning without his heart hammering as he tried to remember where he was. ... Grisha living in camps and broken-down mines, hiding out in tunnels. ... No safe place. No haven. There will be, he promised in the darkness, new words written upon his heart. I will make one.

Demon in the Wood

If Grisha are faring better at the beginning of Shadow and Bone, it's his doing:

... though it was smaller than the Grand Palace, the “Little” Palace was still huge. It rose from the trees surrounding it like something carved from an enchanted forest, a cluster of dark wood walls and golden domes. As we drew closer, I saw that every inch of it was covered in intricate carvings of birds and flowers, twisting vines, and magical beasts. ... We passed door after door, until finally we reached a chamber where another uniformed maid stood waiting by an open doorway. Dimly, I registered a large room, heavy golden curtains, a fire burning in a beautifully tiled grate, but all I really cared about was the huge canopied bed. “Can I get you anything? Something to eat?” asked the woman.

Shadow and Bone- Chapter 5

While I can "excuse" some of the "heroes"- victim of otkazat'sya brainwashing institution, unloved privilaged kid with saviour complex, bigoted religious fanatics due to questionable parenting, universal punching bag... LB's new best girl's somehow coming out of it as the worst one.

Just the fact Zoya was saved by the very law she didn't mind abolishing, going from starving asset of her own mother to well-fed, respected soldier, who knows what do sable and silks look like... what a horrible life to lead! Such deterioration! If only the Darkling didn't bother trying, she'd be free to scrape along as she pleases!

Centuries worth of Aleksander's efforts are the reason Zoya gets to whine about her suicidal aunt instead of being maritally raped by some ancient creep, or outright dead after getting pregnant way too young.

#reply #Grishaverse #grishanalyticritical #The Righteous Gang™ #The Darkling #Second Army #Ravka #Second pseudoArmy #Nikolai Lantsov #Zoya Nazyalensky #KoS Chapter 11 #RoW Chapter 9 #S&S Chapter 7 #KoS Chapter 25 #Demon in the Wood #S&B Chapter 5 #books #quotes #Leigh Bardugo #anti Zoya

[clara-oswinoswald]

The way Mal treats Alina at the end of ch 14 of Shadow and Bone is, for lack of a better word, disgusting.

1.He is upset because he found her happy and safe instead of, idk, being tortured like he imagined?

2.He slut shames her: Are you happy here with him?... The clothes, the jewels, even the way you look. He's all over you.

Mal's comment about how Alina looks is specifically shitty, considering this is the first time she's looked healthy in years. Also, she shows interest in another man and suddenly she's vilified by him? When he's slept with probably dozens of girls, including Zoya.

3. He gets angry at Alina for the way the Darkling looks at her...

If Leigh wanted us to ship malina, Mal should have treated Alina better. he's not acting like a friend here, he's acting like a walking red flag.

#alina starvok #Shadow and bone reread #Shadow and bone #Grishaverse reread #Grishaverse #S&b #anti malina #darklina

[kallypsowrites]

Shadow and Bone season 2 is a string of scenes that might be intriguing as one shots of a fanfic, or might be direct adaptations of single scenes, but the surrounding context either does not support the scenes at best and absolutely ruins the scenes at worst.

If the show is viewed in gifsets of the conversations, a casual viewer might get excited. There are direct lines from the books! There are scenes from the books! There are lovely little shipping moments. But if you actually watch these things in order, adding in the absolutely garbage pacing of the show and you realize that most of these moments are just forced into the narrative for reasons of hollow fan service, they kind of lose their meaning.

There are lots of classic Darklina lines from the books, for instance. But all of the emotional complexity is gone.

There are lots of Kanej moments, but they’re from Crooked Kingdom, which means they are happening WAY too early.

There are lots of Wesper moments, which are of course adorable, but it means there’s very little direction for their dynamic to go in the spinoff and will probably involve creating shallow conflict for the sake of drama

There are Helnik moments, but Matthias really has NO reason to be in the show at all.

There are lots of Malina moments, but the pacing of their relationship is such that it feels like an after thought at best and forced at worst. Like the writers suddenly remembered: ‘oh right, they’re supposed to kiss...ah, well, lets just throw that into the first episode, that’s a normal time to have a romantic relationship begin’.

Kaz’s confrontation with Pekka Rollins is great until you realize that his main emotional arc has already been explored and nearly resolved before the Crows spinoff. Inej’s emotional arc is removed completely as not only she is robbed of a confrontation with Tante Heleen, but also doesn’t seem to have any aversion to romantic touch. Her trauma is just...completely deleted.

Jesper is a grisha! And he has already accepted and embraced it in this show, so he can’t have that arc in the spinoff.

Matthias, Nina and Wylan still have lots of stuff left, but you’ve basically spedrun the arcs of half the Crows.

And while the Crows have some good moments but in the wrong place, the actual shadow and bone characters are absolutely decimated. Alina is given ‘girl boss anger’ because the writers think that means agency. Mal has practically nothing to do accept die. The Darkling has all pathos and care for saving/protecting Grisha removed in favor of making him a one-dimensional evil guy so that the characters can be justified in fighting him. Zoya has no purpose at all and could be removed from the story.

Nikolai might come off the best writing wise but even he is given the character inconsistency of working with the Crows to justify their actions in the previous season.

There are a lot of things to talk about in how bad this season is. But ultimately, its that the whole is SO much less than the sum of its parts. The cast is incredible and they make a lot of terrible lines work as well as they can. But add it all together and you get a terrible mess.

#shadow and bone #shadow and bone season 2 #anti shadow and bone #anti s&b #s&b season 2 #s&b spoilers #shadow and bone spoilers

[kaz-brekker-crow]

So so evil what they did to Kanej. Their relationship is literally built on Kaz ensuring Inej has her freedom and autonomy at every turn, and in the show he OWNS her INDENTURE. And the only reason why this isn't registering as fucked up to anyone is the fact they completely erased Inej's story and character arc.

#six of crows #soc #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #anti shadow and bone #anti s&b #kanej

[nagararitsu]

truly there is nothing worse for a book than a bad live action bc tell me why some of u r drawing jesper to be paler than inej. and why r u trying to make kaz’s haircut look decent. and why is wylan a brunette. and even more concerning why r u drawing wylan to look like 12 and the rest of the crows like 24. u know they’re all high school age right. right. death to the wylan van sunshine trope

#wylan van sunshine thing was popular before the show but like god I feel like it got worse #hate it #anti s&b #jesper fahey #wylan van eck #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #soc #gv

[punkeropercyjackson]

The Atsv writers were so foul for having Peter B not help Miles even though he basically became his older brother in Itsv for the sake of making Ghostflower more 'important' as if they didn't pull them off as a trio perfectly before WITH the Gwen and Miles romance subplot and when we could've gotten more MJ and Mayday and maybe Aunt May and even bigger refs to classic Spidey lore and definitely even more screentime for the full Spiderband so they'd feel like a canonical team already instead of us having to wait for Beyond.Now i gotta deal with people who's top tags are #Hobie Brown Smut and #Noirpunk trying to drag him for not knowing how to treat black kids right

#nah cause i count on ONE hand the amount of times peter b antis weren't adult hobie s*xualizers and i wouldn't even run out of fingers #my longest running bruh moments ever #peter b parker #miles morales #gwen stacy #ghostflower crit #mj watson #t4t petermj #aunt may #mayday parker #hobie brown #spidernoir #hobie brown deserves better #antinoirpunk #itsv #atsv #spiderman #btsv #trans/autistic headcanons #antiblackness #adultification tw #sexualization of minors cw #cp cw #white favoritism #< for n///oirpunk as if margo dosen't exist to ship with hobie #💌 #summerposting

[sixofbabycrows]

the argument that “they had to rush things in the season cause netflix might cancel the show” makes no goddamn sense like - the show might not get another season so what will definitely help is making the storyline worse and ruining all the character arcs… are you hearing yourselves

#shadow and bone #six of crows #s&b spoilers #shadow and bone spoilers #anti shadow and bone

[theweeklydiscourse]

Alina loving her powers would mean for her to love herself. Whenever she loves her light, the way it makes her feel, the way it protects her, she is loving who she is and defying the will of an oppressive society that wants her to hate herself. She was meant for another story where the author doesn’t chastise her for loving herself and create a bizarre message that if you love yourself too much, you need to be humbled and put in your place.

Shadow and bone glorifies repression in a disturbing way. It almost seems to praise Alina’s repression during her adolescence as an accomplishment that eventually allowed her to defeat the Darkling and proof of her humility. In RoW, she condemns her supposed greed in the past in an act of self-flagellation because OBVIOUSLY she must perform her humility to prove that losing her powers wasn’t a horrible thing. This self-hatred is then transformed into condemnations of the Darkling and reveals her (and the narrative’s) fear that she will become like him. It’s almost hilarious how scared the story is of Alina potentially understanding him and sympathizing with his ambitions.

That’s ultimately the great fear of the story. That Alina will care enough about something to actually use her power to change the status quo and help other people aside from Mal. That she will embrace who she truly is and become active in her life. Taking responsibility and stepping up to the challenge is wrong and evil, so she should just sit down and quietly hate herself while the problem gets worse

#shadow and bone #the darkling #lb critical #alina starkov #s&b critical #s&b salt #aleksander morovoza #anti leigh bardugo #darklina #grishaverse meta #s&b netflix

[thee-radio-host-is-a-kookaburra]

antirqs with atypical dysphoria are so amazing and cool and awesome !!

#s&b art #anti radqueer #anti prat #atypical dysphoria #arissomei #arissodic #biid #munchausen syndrome #anti transid #anti transx #antiradqueer #anti radshit #chronosian #xenogender #alterhuman #just kind of tagging communties where there are a lot of those with ad

[stromuprisahat]

One of those things that made Grisha relatively novel concept is that their powers are vital part of them. They need to summon to be healthy, that’s why they don’t get ill, or why they live longer than muggles. That’s also what makes them so easily exploitable. It’s almost effortless to spot Grisha in hiding, to overpower them if they don’t practice, to kill or disect them.

The show decided to ignore that. Casual viewer doesn’t see why are Grisha oppressed, when they obviously have physical power. They can see nice clothes of Second Army, hear Malyen’s bigotry and think it justified. They don’t see Alina dying at the begining, nor withering away while she’s on the run...

#Grishaverse #vs. #Shadow and Bone #Grisha #grishanalyticritical #anti S&B writers #Alina Starkov #V

[thereisnolumos]

darklina thoughts: I wanted to get into the shadow and bone Fandom(books and show) because of the amazing gif set of the darklina kiss I saw

Like who are these two that are sharing such a beautiful kiss. And look so aesthically pleasing together with the darkness and light vibes. I was so excited to find out who these two were because these kind of ships are my everything. Than I find out and 😨😱😤😠🤬!!!!! It was like running full steam a head with tons of excitement and crashing face first into a wall when I find out everything about this Fandom. Both about the books and show. The author and this beautiful ship. And I'm like God why do authors do this ship. Tease us with everything we want and the full potential. But than do a completely one 80 and waste are time on things we don't care about, or find insulting or toxic, and tells us are tastes are dumb and toxic. So now I just read fics and look at beautiful art of Darklina and the potential they could have been. It's just so annoying because this stuff happens all the time!!! And don't get me started on what I heard about the author. I don't know if their true. And wish I could find out real stuff about her. But if it is. God she is so messed up for doing this to us.

I only got in the fandom bcs I randomly saw a teaser for the first season and Ben Barnes was there in all his dark glory. I knew nothing about the books, but the way that show was promoted I was expecting the epic dark romance, villain who’s not really a villain gets the girl all the vibe. Plus cool world build and complicated detailed story overall.

I got none of that.

That show was interesting and hopeful for the first 5 episodes (we will always have 1x05🖤). It wasn’t as detailed and complex as I expected, but it had potential and the main pair - the one they based THE ENTIRE promotion on by the way - was having one of the most fiery and spark inducing chemistry I’ve ever seen on the screen, so I kept my hopes up for the overall plot and focused on them. And then… then they backpedaled SO HARD on everything that made that show interesting for the broad audience, I wonder how they didn’t give themselves a whiplash… though considering the horrible quality of s2 they probably did

Though I didn’t like the way s1 ended, I still thought there is hope, and “we need a conflict for our main pair, I guess”. I truly, wholeheartedly believed that creators and writers of the show are not complete idiots and know how to read the room and what the most of their audience is there for, so that’s what they’ll deliver. But oh my, how wrong I was.

The second season is downright unwatchable with how horrifyingly terrible it is. I only suffered through the entire thing for Ben, who, bless his heart, tried his hardest to deliver the complexity and depth of his character, who he only agreed to play if they “won’t make him a cardboard villain”. And they did exactly that in s2, or tried to, bcs Ben Barnes and his talent didn’t let them, despite all their efforts. The rest of the cast I guess didn’t have enough experience to fix the worst writing imaginable with their acting, so most of the characters became absolutely bland and uninteresting and SO IDIOTICALLY STUPUD, I yelled at them constantly, scaring my cat the entire time.

Also, as much as I understand it from exploring the fandom, the creators and writers of the show are die hard fans of the Crows, and they don’t actually like Alina’s trilogy at all. So… why didn’t they just do the books they wanted I’ll never know. Instead, they forced the Crows in the plot they were never a part of (making all of them okay with selling a girl to slavery in the process. Despite one of them being the former slave and the other one being the one who got her out of it… make it make sense, I beg of you), in the second season they wasted SO MUCH time on their plot lines that 1)didn’t matter one bit for the overall story, 2)were absolutely uninteresting to everyone who isn’t the Crows fan beforehand. In the end we got half-assed Alina and Aleksander’s story with half-assed Crows’ story. They should’ve just made the Crows show, without touching Alina and Aleksander

I haven’t read the books, but from what I gathered in the fandom, though still committing the same sin of putting all the promotion and marketing into the Dark romance trope without actually delivering on it, and force feeding the fans one of the worst and most toxic pairings ever with Malina, at least Alina and Aleksander’s characters weren’t made so cardboard and stupid, and there was tragedy in their story, not the shit that they gave us in s2. Though I absolutely DESPISE the fact that Alina looses her powers in the end and goes on to live Mal’s dream life… Like WHAT THE FUCK?? What levels of internalized misogyny do you need to have as a woman, to write this plot line for your female protagonist???? I can’t.

On Mal’s toxicity: at least that made him a fleshed out character in the books. Absolutely horrible one, how could the author make him “get the girl” is beyond me. But at least he had a personality, however terrible one. In the show, I guess understanding, that no one would root for that asshole, they removed his toxicity almost completely, but that made him as bland as stale porridge. There wasn’t ANYTHING left on his character. At all. How anyone could’ve rooted for him I absolutely refuse to understand. Any woman deserved better than Blade😈

I don’t know anything about Leigh Bardugo, except for the fact that she butcher my native language and makes me furious. If you don’t know the language at least on a medium level, perhaps don’t use it in your books. Or at least hire someone who does. The way she butchered it, I’m not sure she even used Google translate…

So yeah, I’m with you on only reading Darklina fanfics and admiring fan art. I’m not at all sad that they cancelled the show, and I’m even giddy that those creators and writers didn’t get their wet dream of the Crows spin off. They didn’t deserve it after the shit they pulled in the second season. I do hope that they won’t ruin any other shows in the future. I am sad for the actors, who deserved much better and who were actually good at their parts, while the writing was okay. Poor Archie Renaux suffered the most, his character didn’t have good writing at all, not for a single scene. I hope we’ll see more of all of them.

And we need Ben and Jessie to do a film together. Preferably a rom com, but I’m not picky. Just that their characters are together. Such chemistry can’t be wasted

#shadow and bone critical #anti shadow and bone #anti shadow and bone writers #anti s&b #anti s&b writers #anti leigh bardugo #darklina #the darkling #pro the darkling #pro aleksander morozova #pro darklina #anti malina #alina starkov #aleksander morozova #ben barnes #jessie mei li

[bitchthefuck1]

The 2022 tumblr fandom ship list saying kanej is from Shadow and Bone is my villain origin story

#the disrespect #disappointed but not surprised #six of crows #soc #shadow and bone #anti shadow and bone #s&b #anti s&b #kanej #inej ghafa #kaz brekker

[kallypsowrites]

So...the show revealed that actually Nikolai (as Sturmhond) had commissioned the Crows to steal and bring Alina Starkov to him.

But um...why??? At the time the Crows are commissioned, Alina is safe at the Little Palace? Under his family’s control? And its not that he wants to take her away from his family. He brings her right back to her family. And its not that he’d want to take her away from Kirigan. Because at that point Kirigan is fully on the side of his family.

What was the plan? To take her and then...go somewhere else with her? To fuck around with his family? Alina being taken would be likely to start a war. So like.......why?

It’s the stupidest rewrite and it wasn’t needed. Sturmhond/Nikolai could have just found about Alina when she fully revealed herself in Novyi Zem. But they wanted to have a weird reveal/Crow interaction so...*shrug*

#anti s&b #shadow and bone #shadow and bone s2 #s&b s2 #s&b spoilers #shadow and bone spoilers