#me? a billy bones apologist? can't be

[littlebunnyman]

hot take maybe but i think it wasn't silver's betrayal that hurt billy the most but the one of his men, his brothers- that everyone knew silver was lying and yet no one spoke up for him (except jacob garrett, rip). i would have snapped too

[geraltcirilla]

Okay I don't even know what these shadow Books are about but those gifs of ben Barnes characters who's apparently evil? And that girl are sending me .... Is this a thing that's happening in the Books or?? Bc I saw some things on twitter a LOT of people ship them but I have no clue what's up lol I can't believe i'm already caring about a ship I know nothing about it usually takes a lot for me to get invested I blame ben and the fact that we're getting some long overdue asian lead rep it's been years since the queen that is Nikita went off the air.

Shadow and Bones is a Netflix adaption of the GrishaVerse book series. There Are 5 books in total, with a Grisha Trilogy about Alina Starkov (our Asian Heroine!!) and a Duology about "The Crows" that exists in the same universe (there are also a bunch of short stories in the same universe but who cares about that). The Netflix show is combining Alina's Trilogy and The Six of Crow's Duology into one giant story.

FULL DISCLAIMER: I have not read the books, nor do I have any intention to. I actually own the Six of Crows Duology so I might read that. Everything I know about the story is from Booktube because these are wildly popular novels.

The Darkling is the main villain of the Grisha Trilogy (Alina's story). He is described as "a tall handsome young man, appearing not much older than Alina despite his ancient age. He has ink-black hair, quartz gray eyes, and sharp, beautiful features." He at first presents as a friend to Alina and she finds herself attracted to him. Then she discovers he is evil and manipulative and has nefarious intentions. According to the Wiki "He wants the Grisha to be free from slavery and oppression and planned to use the fold as leverage against those people who built the pyre (where they burn Grisha), and not only against his own enemies. He feels the loneliness of immortality, causing him to fixate on Alina because she had the capacity to be like him." So he wants basically what Magneto wants, freedom for his oppressed superpowered brethren BUT at the cost of killing or enslaving all humans, and he wants Alina's help to do this.

So people ship Darklina because it's your classic tale of corruption where he wants Alina to join the Dark Side and she's not interested, but she finds herself connected to him and can't stop thinking about him.

Darklina never becomes canon in the books and she ends up with her Gale-type childhood friend Mal but I've heard they do serve a solid hero/villain arc together. Expect a lotta "you can't like the Darkling because he's evil" or "Darklina is abusive" discourse because he is very much the villain.

I never gave a damn about this story but because it's gonna be on Netflix I'm definitely going to be watching, and I LOVE Ben Barnes so I already know I'm gonna be a Darkling Stan. I am a Ben Barnes Villain Apologist (I was also a Billy Russo Stan and he's arguably worse... I'm nothing if not consistent lol). I like the cast and having our two lead women be a Chinese-American and Nepali-born actresses?? I'm so tired of Nina Dobrev look alikes so this is refreshing.

I'm pretty much gonna be blissfully ignorant my whole way through the show, intentionally ignore the books and hyper fixate on the Crows, Alina, and Darkling. I'm really not interested in joining the discourse on this one lol.