#and are like. on a sunny field. and they BACKLIGHT all the characters so you Still cannot see their faces it was Killing me

[lesamis]

have you watched the second season of shadow and bone? what are your thoughts?

oof, anon, i hope (and honestly kind of expect) that my opinion on this isn't given any weight at all. i'm genuinely not invested enough in the books or the show or the fandom to really have the right to voice much of an Opinion, but i did watch season 2! it made me feel a million different ways, but mostly it didn't make me feel anything, which still bothers me.

there's a special kind of frustration to watching something that you're convinced has the necessary ingredients for a good show, but simply doesn't land with you. i talked my long-suffering friend's ear off trying to figure out what that was as we were watching. what i ended up understanding is that if a studio wants to target as broad an audience as possible with an adaptation, they have literally no incentive to prioritize depth over breadth. combining two fundamentally different book series - both of which come with very large character casts and a ton of plot baggage! - was always going to be a bad choice from a storytelling perspective. the second season kind of drove home to me just how far they were taking the commitment to trying to preserve every storybeat despite having a cast far too large to do heavier plotlines justice, and having a timeline that doesn't accommodate some of the slower developments that made emotional beats land in the books.

what you end up with is a very well-designed (oh the embroidery!) and well-cast (daisy head emmy when!) show that dips into complex and worthwhile characters in the most shallow way possible. inej has one of the most horrific backstories in canon, and the lynchpin of her trauma is taken off the playing field in the blink of an eye to advance a different storyline. a character arc like hers, or genya's, deserves space and resonance. if you got up to get a drink twice throughout the show at the wrong moment, you could have literally missed the resolution of both, that's how little space they take up. given how good these actors' performances are, and how much affection there clearly is among the cast and crew for the project, the lack of substance in the storylines you can actually see in the show makes me feel a bit jaded and cynical.

very sorry to go off on a tangent there, anon! i'm not sure i gave you a very uplifting answer. the blowing-out-of-proportion of adaptations for the sake of hedging every possible bet was a sore point for me in the rings of power last year as well, so consider all of the above as a personal shortcoming much more than like, an Intelligent Critical Assessment :')