i really hope SaB s2 really shows the darkling committing more atrocities, tbh. just to shut the darklina stans up. give them even less of a leg to stand on. i hope it shows how he chased alina. him kidnapping her and mal and threatening even more harm on the other if they didn’t comply. the tether. kirigan destroying the only home and parental figures alina ever knew and making her see the bodies. “i will strip away everything you know and love, until you have no shelter but me”. setting the nichevo’ya on genya for her letting alina go. if there is one thing i want from s2? it is this.

I’m constantly torn between wanting Shadow and Bone season 3 and also the spinoff to be greenlit to be renewed for the cast and want them canceled because the terrible quality of season 2 writings and the frankly atrocious handlings of the Shadow and Bone storyline have made me lose trust in the show writers.

Looking at the state of season 2, who in their right mind would want the same people responsible for that mess to continue working on the Grishaverse adaptation?

We’re going through this phase of fandom right now where people willfully ignore the sexist implications of female characters being shafted into housewife/mother roles or disempowered by the end of their stories. If you dare to criticize such writing decisions, you will be accused of sexism and be hounded for not “respecting their choices” as though these characters are actual people and not tools of storytelling. As if the cliche of female characters “sacrificing” their powers or having them stripped away exists in a vacuum and isn’t influenced by any larger cultural factors.

They’ll say: “Not every character has to be a girlboss!!” Or “Let women be soft and traditional!!” As if that’s some revolutionary way of thinking and not the norm. It’s an extension of choice feminism, dismissing any dissent about the quality of the narrative to make it make sense and avoid the uncomfortable truth. Diminishing the agency of female characters and cramming them into traditional roles is a common occurrence in many stories, and we should be allowed to criticize them without being silenced.

Leigh has this thing of pairing people with similar struggles

Inej-Kaz: PTSD that caused them issues with touching other people

Nina-Matthias: Being raised in a militarized emviroment

Jesper-Wylan: Learning disabilities combined with daddy issues

Zoya-Nikolai: Being too pretty (and there is the hidden vulnerability too but whatever)

Alina-Mal: Self steem and belonging issues

Marie-Sergei: the struggle of being the worst characters on the grishaverse and having the fandom deny it just because they are both death

That answer from the author only makes me so much angrier about Alina's fate in R&R. Apparently back in 2013 Leigh believed that the fact the protagonist embraced her powers made her "the person she was meant to be". A confident girl that doesn't try to be someone else.

So what happened? Why did the author had to fuck this shit up by stripping her of her power? In order to end up with a (shit) man. Was she so desperate to make the protagonist end up in a shallow love story instead of having her strong, confident, powerful and herself?

I believe that, at some point, Bardugo decided to "take" her power because how else could she have that cutie lil ending with Mal? She sacrificed Alina's true happiness to get her bullied by teachers older than her, be "loved" by a man that made her feel less than she is, living in obscurity instead of shining bright, become a beacon of hope for her people and a symbol of unity and having an empty hole inside her because a piece of her soul is missing.

And yet she dared have Alina say that line:

For the 28383 time, Aleksander was right:

It is a living. A living Hell apparently.

i understand that alina is literally the main character of the original s&b trilogy, but the way it ended pissed me tf off. zoya’s storyline in KoS & RoW is something that is really important to, not only me, but so many people. and they’re sort of giving some of it to alina if she is going to become queen. one of the major plot points of nikolai’s duology was zoya becoming the FIRST grisha queen, and if alina is going to be married to nikolai it would be her. don’t get me wrong, i love alina, but giving her things that another female poc character in the series gets is completely unfair to zoya.

im really mad about all of this.

like zoya’s character development is something that is really important to me, because i relate to her a lot, and alina is amazing and i love her, but i don’t think that she should be given other characters major plot points.

zoyalina ruling ravka as eternal grisha queens, the first in history, with a power never seen before, making a haven for their people and spending infinities together.

malkolai as pirate husbands who travel the seas ten times over and occasionally cross paths with a fearsome wraith who they hassle into a surprisingly well-mannered tea party aboard their ship.

Yes, yes, yes. We get it. Alina is the star of the show, the protagonist and blah blah blah.

But Zoya...IS THE QUEEN OF RAVKA.

I didn't expect them to stick to the books precisely, but I didn't expect them to rob a woman of her arc just to uplift another one.

So disappointed.

alina: kirigan? who the hell is kirigan?

alina: *gasp* oh my god no it’s the black heretic

the darkling is the andrew tate of the grishaverse

vasily kissing alina's hand and her reaction of pure disgust - shadow and bone s2e4

Idk who needs to hear this but it’s ok to agree with The Darkling’s ideas but not his methods.

The Darkling had every right to hate non Grisha and his plan made sense. Make it so Grisha are no longer mistreated and use the fold (which I’m pretty sure is an accident in the show and the books, but I could be wrong) as a weapon so Grisha can never be attacked again. It makes sense. He wants to be a savior for Grisha. His methods though? Fucking atrocious. Saying he did absolutely nothing wrong is wild asf to me. He manipulates and becomes so codependent when it comes to teenage girls. He manipulated Zoya, he allows Genya to be assaulted by the king so she can be a spy for him then later scars her, he manipulates Alina, tries to control her powers, threatens to skin her alive if Mal can’t find the second amplifier, he kills several people and I’m pretty sure threatened to murder an entire orphanage plus the other crazy shit he did in the books. He had a great idea that I can stand behind. He’s not wrong for fighting back. He’s wrong for the other wild shit he did and refuses to apologize for. And even if he did apologize, it probably wouldn’t be enough.

You can like The Darkling as a villain. You can find him hot. I love Ben Barnes and I love villains. I have been a Loki lover since Thor. I loved Bucky as The Winter Soldier. The Alpha Pack from Teen Wolf will always own my heart. But this mf Alexander is like Thanos; spitting real shit but has a shit plan. Thanos was spitting when he said the world doesn’t have enough resources but committing genocide instead of just doubling the resources when he had the power to do so is crazy.

Back to The Darkling, you can like him but don’t act like he did absolutely nothing wrong cause I’m never letting go of the bullshit he put Genya through.

I hate how ppl sometimes reduce characters to their romance. For example, Alina in Shadow and Bone- all I see is posts about her “relationship” with that ugly manipulative evil man called the darkling. I’ve only read the first book and half the second but her story is so much more than which man she might end up choosing. She’s literally a kid, abducted from her life and thrusted into smth she doesn’t understand and had the weight of everyone’s expectations on her shoulders. A 400 years old evil and vile man literally grooming a 17 years old is considered a cute romance to y’all? He literally borderline SA’ed her, and COLLARED her. He wanted her as his willing slave 💀💀

I can never understand how ppl preach they want more badass powerful female characters, women in power, and books that have female characters with depth, then minimise their stories to insignificant mere romance plots and with abusive vile men at that…

I still can’t believe they changed the darkling’s reasons for scarring genya. it does such a massive disservice to both of their characters

its over, they cancelled it