#pay to be your prof. and THEN!!!! meta about helnik???? served by the one and only lxncelot (tm) ? I am BLESSED on this fine day | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

musicallisto · 3 years ago

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I am begging every single one of you to read this (yes including @netflix)

Shadow & Bone Blunders: The Fjerdan and the Grisha

So Netflix Really Did A Number On That Matthias Arc, Didn’t They?

Spoilers for the Shadow & Bone trilogy, Six of Crows, and Crooked Kingdom.

Shadow & Bone season 2 has it’s new cast members, production has begun, and I am excited, but with my anticipation strongly tempered by the flaws of season one. Because I so love to be critical of the media I enjoy, and Netflix’s S&B often leaves much to be desired, I am going to be talking about a specific gripe of mine, today - the poor handling of the Matthias and Nina arc.

Afficher davantage

#i'd been saving this for the weekend and OH MY GOD you never disappoint olive. NEVEE #your meta is always SO interesting bc you are SO articulate and just. wow? you manage to pinpoint *exactly* the crucial elements of every #work you examine; all while getting your point across so beautifully and precisely? ma'am reading your essays must be a PLEASURE. i would #pay to be your prof. and THEN!!!! meta about helnik???? served by the one and only lxncelot (tm) ? I am BLESSED on this fine day #every single thing you said here is 100% correct and big brained and wow. never in a million years could i have said it better #yknow when i watched the show i was particularly attentive to the helnik scenes because everylone knows how much they mean to me #on the purely I-Will-Go-Down-With-This-Ship surface level #but also because these two really are a placeholder and the best example of execution for *all* my favorite tropes in fiction? whether they #be romantic 'fanfic' tropes (Enemies To Lovers...gasp!) but also narrative and Symbolic tropes. they're just exactly the kind of story i #love to read and that is so dear to me! like - individually they are character archetypes that hold So Much Power in my perspective of life #and echo so many aspects of my own history and core values so ANYWAY the point being. i paid close attention to #how they were handled by the show and I was thrown off by how fast their relationship evolved? all in the span of like 20min of screen time #over 1 ep? i don't think you unlearn 18 years (or as it may have been in the show 30 yrs) of relentless bigoted nationalistic propaganda #in twenty minutes. MAYBE JUST ME THO #and i Get It storytelling yadda yadda they had to fit a lot into s1 and they brushed helnik under the rug which is BULLSHIT!#because helnik are so CRUCIAL! they are the backdrop of the WHOLE sociopolitical conflict in the grishaverse!#and i'm SO HAPPY you tackled this issue olive because you explained it masterfully. my heart is full and i'm well-fed now #also may i say you write the characters so masterfully? i only want to see them painted in your hues #ALSO ALSO! i was going on a tangent and forgot but i just remembered - i LOVE the emphasis you put on #matthias' religion and djel! it's literally NEVER mentioned at all in the show when it's like. fjerda's number ONE motivation?#in the show they make it seem that fjerda hates ravka and specifically grisha for the hell of it bc they're like abominations or whatever #but there's no mention of how they think they are waging a holy war and how religion is rooted in every sphere of fjerdan life #not only the military! and its such an important plot point bc how many works of fiction do you know #that tackle the organized religion vs faith & collective belief vs individual belief with as much NUANCE and weight as six of crows does?#which is why its SO important to put emphasis on that side of matthias - bc as he grows and learns he lets go of his toxic beliefs #and gradually NINA becomes his new religion!!!!! and love is his religion!!!!!!#yall know how i feel about love as religion im losing my mind here!!!!!!!#anyway I am changed forever by this and I oh so wish this were the real script. you should screenwrite for netflix olive #no actually you're much more talented and clever than they deserve. but if you wrote a show i'd stan the hell out of it #shadow and bone

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