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thewingedwolf · 1 year

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i am rewatching shadow & bone bc, once again, i am a parody of myself, and i really am so fond of Mal in the show, i am deeply nervous about how he’ll be written in s2 lol. not as nervous about almost everyone else - i say ALMOST bc i was not impressed with the way Jesper & Nina weren’t shown to be bisexual, like, at all, & while i think it was just clumsy writing & not malice (the same as the clumsy way they wrote Alina’s race), that doesn’t mean it’ll get better lol. also pls understand i spend half my time shitting on the darklng, ben barnes does an excellent job reminding me why i hate that bitch okayyyy

Mal already knows that Alina’s tent with the other cartographers was moved, and knows where it moved. We first see him fighting but seems like he got there, immediately attempted to find Alina, figured out she had been moved and was wandering around, then said fuck it she’ll find me or i’ll find out she got thrown in lock up again, and decided to go beat someone up so he could show off his kruge in front of her lmao

Alina is interested in the grisha. she’s smiling and curious, clearly thinks Zoya looks cool af (she’s right, Zoya is cool af). Mal spends the entire time frowning at them lol. Could be bc a grisha just crashed his party, could be mal’s general dislike of grisha and the upper class. it’s very funny either way that he just Refuses to smile until Alina distracts him

Alina experiencing A Racism but still thinking quick enough so her team can eat makes me emo but also Mal immediately being like “time to commit some crimes” every single time someone is racist to Alina is so great, get u a real man like Mal

Racism is done very messily in the show and i’m hoping it improves bc like - Zoya is insulated from most racism due to her status, but we still get that comment about “YOU from Novokribirsk?” comment from another Grisha, which seemed like a pretty obvious slight at her being Suli. Alina experiences racism everywhere she goes from nearly everyone she meets - random cooks, cartographers, servants, Zoya, and the Darkling himself. Even Genya sort of brushes off the comment about her eyes as like, typical bullying and not something very different & much more insidious. Mal looks uncomfortable at the anti Shu Han propaganda & I think that’s it? Which feels weird bc he doesn’t have the class protection Zoya has, but maybe he doesn’t *look Suli* culturally the way Zoya and Inej clearly do. Or are Mal AND Alina both supposed to be Shu Han? We know from Inej and Nina (and maybe Zoya, idk, i never read king of scars bc i would have to acknowledge Matthias & David’s deaths and I refuse) that the Suli are still mistreated on a legal level in addition to social, but are maybe treated marginally better than the Shu that live in Ravka, bc Ravka is in an active war against Shu Han. Is that the difference in what Mal experienced vs what Alina does? lol or i’m overthinking something that clearly wasn’t thought out very well before they put it in the show. I just like. Do Not think Mal is meant to be a white Ravkan, firstly bc Archie isn’t a white brit, and secondly because - look at him aksjdjd that is not a man that can really pass for white. I hope they handle Alina’s background better, especially since she’ll be interacting with other Shu characters, in s2 but i also want an explanation for Mal’s background!!!

I do think it’s funny that the sickness grisha get if they don’t use their powers is very informed in the show. Mal makes a few comments about Alina being sick all the time but she doesn’t actually look or act sick at any point in the show aksksk

Mal is so strong, like the dude is fuckin ripped, a fucking volcra tries to rip Alina away and he’s just like “yeah i can take this bitch with one hand” aksjsj

I feel bad for that lil blond boy that clearly has a thing for Alina lmao he really tries to stick up for her and she does not even notice a little bit and then he dies bc West Ravka is like “anyways don’t get captured even tho we’re at war with half the world and you have no resources, crew, or family over here” ya, they’re way better than Old Ravka smh (Zlatan is just as big of a bitch as the king and darklng dammit)

Interesting that Zoya only gets shitty with Alina after both the Darklng & Mal clearly choose her over Zoya. Mal she probably doesn’t gaf about, but it definitely stung her pride that she can’t even pull an orphan from Keramzin but Alina can. Before that tho, even if she’s thrown by Alina, she clearly sees Alina as One Of Us. She even looks visibly annoyed when everyone starts laughing at Alina and her “i’m a mapmaker” response & seems to pick up on the implied racism of the “what are you” question. It’s an annoying response that after being rejected, Zoya uses that racism against Alina to put her in her place but like…I guess it’s not wildly ooc? bleh.

Ivan and Fedyor purposefully ignoring the Shu Of It All when talking about power and privilege is 100% why Alina takes so long to trust the grisha, and so easily turns against the Darklng imo. For all they understand the danger of being Grisha, for all Ivan wants to lecture Alina about her privilege at dinner, none of them even bother to understand what it’s like now, right now, for the poor of Ravka. You serve in the army & let the Darklng indoctrinate you with his nonsense, or you flee like the mother in the first episode does, taking your chances with the slavers & the volcra & the Fjerdans. There are no good choices for the grisha, no good choices for the non grisha peasantry, and Alina’s entire existence, from the never ending racism she experiences, to the death and starvation she’s surrounded by, is a constant reminder how few choices that exist no matter if you’re grisha or not.

So like, most of the bad guys have Weird Foreign Accents and I dislike it. All the Ravkans should have Russian accents but it’s only Fedyor & a few mean servants that do. The Fjerdans all have accents. Pekka has an accent. Everyone else is just a brit, including people in Kerch, even tho they don’t even speak the same language as the Ravkans do, they speak Kerch! Why does Kaz not have some country bumpkin accent dammit

“When our closest friend is in trouble, we do foolish things.” Smash cut to Kaz doing the Dumbest shit in an attempt to protect Inej from Heleen l m a o it’s not one whipped bitch in this show it’s two (it’s three actually, Matthias just hasn’t shown up yet lmao)

When Mal & Alina are both envisioning each other & reach out to hold the others’ hand, hundreds of miles away but desperate for comfort, THAT was the moment i fell for them. Archie & Jessie are just so Powerful okay aksjdjd

feels more obvious in retrospect that he’s not trying to train her to do anything but answer to him. he doesn’t even bother preparing her for the king bc he knows he can amplify her powers, so long as she’s not fighting him.

I do not buy Baghra’s insistence that Alina’s feelings for Mal hold her back. She’s able to summon her powers when she’s angry, and Baghra takes that short cut by continuously pissing Alina off. But Alina also uses her powers whenever she thinks of protecting Mal; she protects him on the skiff & when she remembers trying to run away with him for protection, she can summon a bit of her power. It’s Alina’s compassion that gives her abilities, but Baghra has spent so much time nurturing her own bitterness, watching her son nurture his anger, it just never occurs to her that Alina’s strength comes from her desire to protect the people she loves. Alina goes from wanting solely to protect Mal to channeling her power through her anger and rejection & Baghra treats it like a win but it’s just another shortcut that clearly makes her more susceptible to the Darklng whispering in her ear, not less, and if Baghra had any goddamn sense, she would have seen that she was making her son’s job easier. But like, the darklng didn’t just come out of nowhere lmao, and you can clearly see where he gets his defeatist, manipulative, and bleak ass outlook on life from.

As a certified Matthias stan still refusing to acknowledge the end of crooked kingdom, i think it is genuinely so funny that Mal gets chest wound after gut wound after chest wound in s1 and shrugs it off, but Matthias gets shot one (1) time and dies immediately & cannot be saved by the most powerful heartrender that ever lived. leigh PLS

“you are my true north and i can see my way to you now” IM JUST.

Genya has to hurt Alina’s feelings by lying about Mal, then immediately and smoothly changes the subject to something that will make Alina laugh. She knows she has to betray Alina and she tries her hardest to soften the blow, encourages Alina to return to the blue kefta instead of going too hard towards the Darkling so she has the protection of a color and a people, warns her as best as she can to be wary of the Darklng, even while she’s helping isolate Alina from anyone who could help her escape. i’m so depressed about Genya.

Enter David and Genya loses her damn mind ansjsjdjdjd Alina is doing miracle sun summoning and Genya just watches David the whole time, who probably cannot fucking believe his luck that his weird ass boss for ONCE is letting him hang out with the meanest, coolest, smartest person in the palace instead of Ivan & Fedyor, who spend all their time flirting with each other and bullying him

Fjerda is lichrally trying to commit genocide against the grisha & Shu Han does…some jacked up shit to their grisha lol, and i did a whole post about how the Darklng is just more of the same, but so is Baghra. All their talk of looking out for Grisha, but they both treat the peasantry of Ravka as disposable. Nikolai is theeeee only valid ruler specifically bc he does think of the cost to the peasantry & to the grisha before he makes decisions (something his father and his brother also don’t do lol). And both Baghra & Aleksander allow this “us vs them” bs to permeate through their own people - no grisha healers help the first army, and Ivan reads the dead but glosses over the Otkazat'sya deaths to focus on the grisha. but this is on purpose - if you make the grisha other the Otkazat'sya, you can easily turn them against one another. neither baghra nor aleksander ever work towards like, actual freedom for the grisha by building bridges and relationships between the grisha and the Otkazat'sya, they just turn the grisha into weird, insular child soldiers.

Alina realizing she can just swing on the racists now love that for her

Mal tends to deal with his feelings for Alina bubbling to the surface by purposefully breaking the tension; closing his eyes & going to sleep when they’re thrown in the brig, cracking a joke about going to Ketterdam when he steals her food. But their convo in the woods after they’re reunited is the first time he doesn’t try it - you can almost see he wants to, when she says she cheated on the grisha test bc she didn’t want to leave him, his whole brain short circuits at what it could mean, and it’s a moment where he might have purposefully broken the tension but instead he takes a minute to think before he tries to open up abiut his own feelings - only to get derailed & heartbroken by the realization that the stag drawing wasn’t Alina trying to communicate with him, but Aleksander manipulating & isolating her. But he still doesn’t break the tension - he lets Alina hold him, and he holds her in return, & stops running from his feelings for real this time.

I do find it so funny how Aleksander sees David raising his hand to speak, initially starts to tell him to knock it off, and then realizes David will not understand why Ivan and him find it annoying & just decides to choose his battles aksjjdjd.

Also, him going through the five stages of grief when he realizes Mal & Alina are together, and overdramtigcally monologuing about the orphans of Keramzin being reunited to this random dude who has no idea wtf he’s talking about. Perfect, no notes.

Episode 7 is just very well written. All the conversations are tense, all the action is painful, all the acting is amazing. From David half in tears as he helps enslave Alina, all the anger going out of Alina when she realizes the king was raping Genya, Genya’s guilt & shame over her own hand in betraying Alina stopping her from talking even though she’s usually so composed, Mal’s helpless snarl when he says Aleksander will wish he’d killed him, even Aleksander’s inability to look Alina in the eyes because he knows she’s right to hate him it’s just that he thinks she’s a justifiable sacrifice. Meanwhile the Crows are being the most chaotic idiots ALIVE akskdkdk just perfect, excellent writing.

What i think is interesting is that Alina makes the hypocrisy argument to Genya, and it works. Genya appeals to Alina’s compassion when she admits the king has been raping her, but Alina pieces together that Aleksander placed her in front of the king to begin with. Not a soldier, just a pawn. And Genya is so struck by this argument she has no counter; she just leaves in tears. Alina tries this with Aleksander as well, to get him to see the hypocrisy in his actions - of killing the king because the king is a monster, yet using the fold as a weapon. It has the complete opposite effect because whereas Genya is aware on some level that she’s being used, Aleksander is so far removed from his own experiences as a pawn, as a target, he can’t see her point.

“all countries will answer to us. for who would oppose us now?”

means Something to me that Immediately after that nasty comment from that heartrender, Zoya sees another Suli girl (who, if we remember, someone she is friends with just called Suli trash before getting got by said Suli girl) who is about to be killed, witnesses the destruction of her home and what she will find is the death of the only person who ever loved her as a child, and makes the decision to betray the only stability she’s ever known for the glimmer of hope that Alina can offer her.

It’s also exactly what I mean when I say I hope we get an explanation for Mal’s background. In Inej’s chapters we get the sense that the Suli are a people that draw close together, even outside Ravka. Her curse on Bajan clearly hits him hard; even clearly trying to assimilate into Kerch culture, the thought that his Suli ancestors may forsake him for harming a fellow Suli really gets under his skin. So in the show, what I love is we get a small exploration of this bond that exists between all Suli as outsiders in their home countries - Zoya and Inej instinctively working together, Recognizing that bond in each other, with Inej even attempting to stop Zoya from going back to the ruins of the city, of wanting Zoya to stay with them. And Zoya, despite her pained history with her own people, despite her comments about Alina being [redacted], clearly returns those feelings. She’s so much warmer with Inej, and vice verse, then say, Jesper is with Mal (he’s not cold to Mal, he’s just Typical Jesper). The thing is - maybe you could argue Zoya and Mal kind of take a small interest in each other because they recognize the other is Suli, but Inej and Mal don’t really have that connection in the time they know each other, and Zoya and Mal are much more cordial with each other than Zoya and Inej are. OBVIOUSLY there are other factors at play. But. Whereas we get a hint of Zoya’s own complicated past, and Inej is defined by her ties to her culture, Mal doesn’t really show any of this beyond one single uncomfortable look at a Shu Han propaganda poster, and that’s likely more to do with Alina than his own background. I JUST THINK ITS WEIRD AND CLUMSY OKAY.

idek what to say about Alina’s amazing speech besides HELL YEAH THATS MY WIFE. she’s so fucking cool.

Ivan’s lil bitch ass being like “know your place” RIGHT AFTER Alina gives her “you asked WHAT I am” speech and then Jesper being like “i think the fuck not” and tossing him overboard. absolutely perfect i love that man.

Zoya looks so uncomfortable during the whole conversation by the fire. For the first time, she’s the outsider - the lone splash of color against the browns and blacks of the crows and malina. But when Zoya says she has to go back, Inej shoots up to stop her, and even Kaz attempts to dissuade her from what he thinks is no better than a suicide run. Since her childhood, Zoya has seemed alone, but just as her aunt stepped in to save her then, and the crows attempt to console her now, Zoya is never as alone as she feels.

And neither is Alina! Knowing where their stories end up going, i think it is interesting that both Zoya and Alina are very adaptable and very adept at making very loyal friends. Despite all the odds against them, with them being Suli and Shu, with Zoya being a huge bitch (which I love) and Alina constantly struggling with her own self worth, other people see just how amazing the two of them are and are willing to fight for them, with them, to be near them. Sankta Alina and the Grisha Queen. Wonderful.

#shadow and bone #grishaverse #rani's liveblogging tag #anti darkling #ben barnes is a magnificent actor who imbues a lot of depth into a character that is a textbook abuser & i love him. aleksander can choke.#i’m in mobile so i can’t put it under a cut i’ll do that later probably #rani attempts meta #there’s a lil meta here so it’s going in that tag #if u want to comment u can. u can even disagree but if ur a bitch about it i will be a bitch back

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thewingedwolf · 2 years

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Taylor and Michael bonding over how they’re struggling with alliances bc they HATE how touchy feely everyone is like

#stop that was so funny stealing my aunt’s paramount plus for feeds is so much fun #rani's liveblogging tag #bb24

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thewingedwolf · 10 months

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What makes you think Allison didn't know about Klaus being queer? If you're going by on-screen conversation, then Diego and Five don't actually know that he is. (Five blinked away before he revealed the gender of osso bucco guy and the talk with Diego was erased from the timeline.)

i mean mostly that none of them really know because they barely know each other lol. especially at that point in s2 - they’ve spent all of a week hanging out after having no contact for over a decade. it’s not that klaus is closeted or that they wouldn’t be accepting it’s that they just literally have never interacted with him in normal enough circumstances to know. also i forgot five blinked away lol but i think given that klaus pretty freely talks about being queer and he’s spent way more time with five and diego atp it makes sense they’d probably have an idea vs allison who he didn’t interact with nearly as much. also, imo, klaus and diego were probably close as kids. allison & luther obviously paired off, and it seems like ben, five, and viktor did as well (when five first jumps forward he calls for viktor, ben, and reginald in that order. it’s viktor he first trusts with the truth, it’s viktor that reminisces about five and ben first, viktor gets to say goodbye to ben before he dies in s2, just lots of things that make it seem like they were a trio), which leaves diego and klaus. and diego and klaus seem much closer in s1 than they do with the others, the same way that five is more willing to trust viktor in s1, and allison & luther are immediately close. they all seemed to latch back onto their favorite sibling growing up before spreading out a bit.

and from allison’s pov like - your drug addict brother comes over and tries to jack some of your dead dad’s stuff, gleefully raids through everyone’s stuff and steals your skirt from when you were 14, disappears for a few days and comes back wearing slightly more masc clothing but crying way more & attempting to be sober suddenly, then you all get shat out in the 60s - like that doesn’t really point one way or the other for klaus’ sexuality lol. him and allison barely interact and he had a sugar mommy not a sugar daddy.

also, allison is deeply annoyed with him for the first half of the season. grateful he got ray out of jail but whereas she’s hesitant of luther bc of her complicated feelings for him, she seems genuinely annoyed whenever klaus is around. she likely has some sympathy for luther and his inability to fit in while klaus has (supposedly) not had that issue, he’s even been rich the whole time. but she visibly reacts when he uses male pronouns to describe a lover and instantly starts taking him more seriously - granted, in her allison way of Making Everyone Get Along by just enabling him lol so they spend the rest of the episode drinking. but still. she shows a marked change in sympathy post kitchen talk in ep 5 and imo it’s not just because he relapsed, but because of why he relapsed.

#it’s how she relates to the world. she finds the thing that Sets Them Apart and uses it as a way of bonding. look at us two outsiders.#i had wanted and expected allison AND klaus to lose it over their loves being erased by the time jump (albeit in different ways)#but when they didn’t happen and then we got no dave mentions at all AND allison’s story went Like That? I WAS SAD!!!#allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #asks #rani's liveblogging tag #also like neither diego or allison are SURPRISED either it’s just clearly brand new info #i do like that klaus never sits anyone down. he just says it and keeps talking. YOU keep up with HIM.#rani attempts meta

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thewingedwolf · 10 months

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i think what’s interesting about allison and klaus in s2 is that she doesn’t realize he’s queer yet so his behavior in her eyes is just him flaunting his white privilege bc he can become the sugar baby to a rich white lady who believes in mysticism and start a cult and buy his way out of jail and relapse for shits and giggles while allison is immediately attacked and finds herself in the middle of a violent stand off with the police.

BUT THEN KLAUS COMES OUT TO HER.

He not only comes out to her (bc at this point the only people who know he’s interested in men are Ben, Diego, and Five. like he’s flamboyant and likes to play with gender presentation but she lived in hollywood, that doesn’t mean shit lol) but tells her he did something he admits was risky and stupid to save the man he loves and that’s why he relapsed. and suddenly it’s not klaus getting to flaunt privilege she will never have access to, it’s klaus being in the exact same shitty boat she’s in: living in a time where parts of who he is are considered less than and under violent threat from The System. He did a foolish and risky thing but he did it for love and she just rumored a cop and convinced her husband she’s an FBI plant to save his life!

#rani's liveblogging tag #and then they had her bond with diego (rightly) and not talk about this again with klaus??????#forgetting dave really affected klaus’ relationship with allison and ben and it annoys me #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves

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thewingedwolf · 10 months

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been rewatching tua and i completely forgot that klaus was sober in the 60s until Dave punches him and he relapses from the stress while still in the liquor store and then Dave leaves for Vietnam WAY EARLIER and then Ben, the only other person who knows Dave, dies and we get absolutely zero mention of how that is a super stressful thing to happen to Klaus holy shit!!! he’s just like, mostly sober existing in a universe where Dave goes to Vietnam younger and potentially never meets Klaus and can’t reminisce with Ben and doesn’t bring it up once!!

#lila and diego are written so well it’s amazing to me how often they forget dave. i love some good old fashioned homophobia #usually it’s hidden behind like 8 layers of excuses but this is just clearly. then not valuing dave as a romantic interest. annoying #rani's liveblogging tag #klave #and that’s not even adding like. what could change in dave after having to punch a clearly queer man in an attempt to stay safe and closeted #and then leaving for vietnam way earlier. like i just!!!!!#dave katz

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thewingedwolf · 1 year

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I broke this up bc it was getting embarrassingly long, here’s my thoughts on the crows storylines going into s2, pls be aware i ship every possible iteration of the crows together in a very romantic context, i Will Be referring to Jesper as both Kaz and Inej’s boyfriend, bc he IS DAMMIT.

anyways after all that mal talk and speaking of “clearly in love and coping with it as best he can”, I think it’s very funny that Jesper looks more like he got caught doing something embarrassing by his crush (bc that’s exactly what it is) than actually chastised by his boss for straight up abandoning his job to go gamble. he tends to look imo way more embarrassed at Kaz snapping at him in Ketterdam than he does when they’re out and about, probably bc it’s like “in front of all our friends babe? really?”

Also - jesper abandoning his job to go gamble. oh poor baby. they’ve set it up as like A Problem but it’s sort of quirky funny right now, while not being the butt of the joke either. the joke is more “kaz is annoyed by jesper’s gambling and jesper charmingly brushes it off bc he’s a goof” but Clearly, jesper gambling away their money instead of just buying coal later on is a problem.

Everyone calls Kaz boss right in front of Perr Haskell’s salad lollllll i know they do this in the book too and i think it’s just as funny

Once again speaking of “dumb bitch trying to hide his crush & failing miserably” I love that Inej is having a literal religious experience realizing a sun summoner has been born when Alexie tells them about alina, looks at Kaz in excitement, realizes he hasn’t even twitched, and goes back to being excited. Kaz meanwhile, pointedly looks everywhere But at inej until after he notices Inej has stopped staring at him, and THEN he watches her reaction. Just the biggest dumb ass alive.

Also Jesper “apparently i’m a big softie” Fahey being genuinely distressed when Alexie is killed while once again, Kaz refuses to react.

Jesper evades Inej’s unsaid question about Kaz & Pekka, then immediately asks Kaz “did pekka recognize you” so he knows SOMETHING WHY DOES HE KNOW AND WHAT DID KAZ TELL HIM.

related to that but jesper is less obviously in love with Kaz in the show, & seems ok w Kaz bossing him around bc they’re genuinely friends vs Jesper bitches waaaay more (with good reason) in the books about being Kaz’s errand boy - show!Kaz is the boss & still a big bitch, but Kaz trusted Jesper w some truth of his past OR Jesper was there when Something happened, so Jesper lets the bitchiness slide. More even footing, and i think it was a good change, esp as Kaz gets more withdrawn & erratic as Pekka’s plans start to fail, bc now jesper knows why.

Note that while Kaz is just as much of a bitch to Jesper as in the books, he also just as clearly loves him. “Watch the door” “Come along we have a new job” all these orders that Jesper follows with only mild complaining, but they’re *important* jobs that Kaz only trusts Jesper with. It’s that Kaz only trusts Jesper & Inej to watch his back, but he shows it by being the biggest bitch alive lol.

A lot of the changes to the Crows seem to be an attempt to put Jesper & Inej on slightly more even footing with Kaz. That they could leave (bc Inej has paid off her indenture to him) but choose to stay with him. That they know why he hates Pekka, or more keenly suspect the reason he hates Pekka. What i wonder is if it’s in preparation for the soc/ck storylines, where Kaz gets a lot more reckless, so the writers want him to seem slightly less unlikeable to show only watchers who don’t get to peek inside his head & see how much he loves the crows even when he’s being a dink.

OR if it’s a purposeful contrast to the Darklng - both very powerful men who love the color black & are allergic to doing the right thing, but Kaz spends half his story line trying to liberate Inej, trusts Jesper with the truth & needles at both of them, but isn’t explicitly forcing either to do something they don’t want to do. while the Darklng at every turn further undermines Alina’s power, and keeps Zoya, Genya, David, & Nina in the dark about his real motivations, & we can SEE already how guilty David, Genya, and Zoya feel about continuing to follow his orders no matter how cruel.

Once Again speaking of dumb ass bitches who can’t hide their crush, the way Nina is ready to beat the shit out of Matthias, and even then, powerless, alone, weak, and so clearly just the exact sort of threatening, seductful Grisha the Fjerdans warn against, Matthias is struck by Nina’s humanity, her point that grisha are never found innocent, her anger in the face of certain doom. they speak one (1) time and he’s like “cool time to forget everything i’ve ever been taught so i can be this weird mean lady’s malewife” aksjjdjd

the sequence of the trio with the conductor in the fold is so entertaining, the comedic timing of them all sniping at each other, and jesper walking up to kill the volcra while clutching milo, and the way he closes his eyes and trusts his abilities as a grisha to send the bullet where it needs to go. chefs kiss, no notes.

“i’d rather starve than be a traitor” is the moment Matthias really starts to understand Nina is just as human as he is, bc she’s just as stubborn and loyal as he is, but when she spits the bread back in his face is the moment i think he falls in love with her. Loyal, stubborn, and too much for Matthias to even comprehend.

Jesper being delighted by Inej’s acrobat abilities and Inej letting him shoot a gun at her face and Kaz just nopes out of that shit immediately truly the most chaotic throuple.

The deep breathing as Kaz tries to ignore the he pain and walk without a limp & all his pained noises as he’s running around, jumping up into the carriage, etc has me like “haha i do that” aksjs

something something inej always looks to kaz when Something Religious is happening because faith is something she has always shared with the people she loves, but she’s always met with Kaz’s impassive insistence that faith is nothing more than a parlor trick. but still she always looks to him to share her faith. and it’s always there, just underneath - he doesn’t feel the need to share those moments bc the only saint he’s ever looked to was Inej & despite himself, he’s eager to share those moments with her, the ones where they fight together and save each other.

Kaz being so shitty with the Darklng bc he realizes how Aleksander has mistreated & isolated Alina is so fucking good. He’s a criminal but he has like, standards lmao. A straight con is one thing, but Kaz always dislikes rich people being cruel to people they’re supposed to care about for Rich People Reasons (see: his thinly veiled dislike for Jan even pre-Jan Stealing Inej).

“You’re loud and you’re lewd” while staring directly at Nina’s mouth, get it together Matthias you’re embarrassing yourself akksjs

Kaz moves towards Inej when she’s injured like he wants to hold her up but immediately stops short & looks anxious, turns to Jesper sort of helplessly, but Jesper is already moving to help Inej, probably picking up quickly that Kaz won’t. And then Kaz just stands there looking like he feels like a shit for not helping her, no Wonder he’s so shitty with Jesper when they get to the Fold, he’s just mad about the whole thing aksjdj like “oh now you like Jes more than me huh” kaz, inej has always liked Jes more than you bc he’s more likeable

what’s interesting about kaz the whole season is that he refuses to explicitly tell inej that he will protect her from tante heleen, bc admitting that out loud is admitting a) that he gave up the crow club to protect her already and b) he loves her. so he skirts around it whenever she brings it up, which makes inej suspicious (with good reason - he owns her indenture and it makes their dynamic inherently unbalanced. he wouldn’t do it but that doesn’t meant he couldn’t do it - he has the power to sell her right back into slavery) and she brings this up, only for kaz to continue skirting around the issue. When she outright asks if he’s threatening to sell her, and he once again refuses to give a clear answer, she seems to make the decision to cut her losses & ditch ketterdam. it’s only when facing the fact that she might actually leave him that Kaz finally forces himself to open up to her - and not just open up but meet Inej on her level. Admit Alina is a sun summoner, and share in her feelings of faith, but not of faith in saints and intangible power, faith in her. And Kaz bringing that little bit of wall down convinces her to stay - she will have him without walls or she will not have him at all, and Kaz will always choose to painstakingly confront his trauma over truly losing Inej.

I like how often Matthias, similar to Kaz (and boy would they both hate that comparison lol), dances around his feelings by changing the subject and cutting the tension, and Nina (just like her girl Inej) simply refuses to let him run. I just love the way he tries to end the conversation and Nina straight up tells him no. Won’t let him make a joke about the whaler’s hut. Won’t let him take the easy way out and pretend there isn’t something between them. She forces him to admit his feelings, and to find a solution. it goes to shit immediately but the point is just like inej will not take shit from kaz, nina has her limits with matthias. and both men see they are approaching they limit, and back down to meet their girls at the level they need. i love the crows so fucking much.

“i will keep you warm” MATTHIAS PLEASE. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING YOU ME AND DJEL.

I also love the kerch sailor being like “hey you kefta wearing fuck if u don’t think kerch will go to war over a few bucks you are out of your goddamn mind” and fedyor KNOWS he’s telling the truth akskd

I could write a book about Nina and Matthias’ final scene, and the Crows final scene, the way all 5 of them have no one in the world but each other, desperate when they walk into Kerch, but certainly not alone.

#rani's liveblogging tag #shadow and bone #grishaverse #six of crows #the dregs #poly crows #same here - u can comment & even disagree just don’t be a bitch about it

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