#the books and ben barnes

[thedeadpoets-blog]

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”

-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

[periodcostumefantasylover]

The Darkling + book quotes Book vs Show

Why do you have such disdain for otkazat'sya? Not disdain. Understanding. They're not all fools and weaklings. What they are is predictable, he said. The people would love you for a time. But what would they think when their good king aged and died, while his witch of a wife remained young? When all those who remember your sacrifices are dust in the ground, how long do you think it will take for their children or grandchildren to turn on you? His words sent a chill through me. I still couldn't get my head around the idea of the long life that lay ahead of me, that yawning abyss of eternity. You never considered it, did you? Said the Darkling. You live in a single moment. I live in a thousand. Are we not all things?

[stfulara]

everything aside I'm still mad at netflix for canceling shadow and bone right when the plot was thickening.

[anythingfor-ourmoony]

The Marauders + being happy

~ft. a hint of wolfstar <3~

[thebellekeys]

the age-old discussion as to whether or not ben barnes was poor casting for dorian gray is incredibly funny to me like yes we know that dorian is supposed to look like an innocent blond cherub instead of a dark luciferian daddy long leg prince of sin because literature but it all comes down nitpicking in the end because i’m just sure that oscar wilde the man himself would have been salivating over ben every waking minute of his damn life if he were here

[thedeadpoets-blog]

- all beauty has an end -

[aesthetic--mood]

Shadow and bone Aesthetic

[lucyfishwife]

Can confirm he reads books as I just sold him two. This almost makes up for a very bad start to the day (slept 2 hours, missed alarm, forgot reading glasses)

[periodcostumefantasylover]

Favorite Character in a TV-Show 2023

The Darkling in Shadow & Bone Season 2

[ladygreek]

hades x persephone | a touch of darkness

[thebellekeys]

nah cus why do the s&b cast kinda have their own cast lore like i’m so invested

the many secret goofy videos and pictures of freddy that clearly exist but the cast won’t share, archie’s ongoing sufferation due to the rampant mal hate in the famdom, amita not knowing how the internet internets, danielle probably having a stan tumblr and also being the championing voice of the people, everyone’s hyperawareness of ben’s ben-ness at all times, ben somehow being the one that understands how fandom and thirst work the best

[dciphe-r]

[daerklina]

what do you mean alina has to wear first army soldier’s uniform. that first army was killing grisha, her people, left and right and the writers made ZERO statement on it.

it’s so unfair that in the books alina was manipulated into not wearing darkling’s color, a man who protected grisha from otkazat’sya for centuries.

but everyone was fine w her wearing simple soldier’s uniform 🤡🤡 at least in the books they gave her golden kefta w jewelry and all the fancy shit she deserved.

book! Alina would turn them all into fruit ninja if they tried to put her in that ugly uniform of men who ordered to kill her.

[periodcostumefantasylover]

The Darling + quotes

Book VS Show

The moment his lips met mine, the connection between us opened and i felt his power flood through me. I could feel how much he wanted me - but behind that desire, i could feel something else, something that felt like anger. I drew back startled. You don't want to be doing this. This is the only thing i want to be doing, he growled and i could hear the bitterness and desire all tangled up in his voice.

The key to the shadow fold is finaly within our grasp, and right now i should be in the war room hearing their report. I should be planning our trip north. But I'm not am i?

Am I? he repeated and he nipped at my neck. I gasphed and shook my head, unable to think. He had me pushed up against the door now, his hips hard against mine."The problem with wanting", he whispered his mouth trailing along my jaw until it hovered over my lips, is "that it makes us weak".

[iamthehamburglar]

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

who fit their character more? jessie as alina or ben as the darkling

also, do you think half shu alina was a good idea?

….Neither?

I don’t think either of them really understood their characters. But Ben Barnes was incredibly egregious and I already parasocially resent him for his acting choices lmao so I guess JML was the better fit. It’s relative however

JML’s performance was mostly fine. They had practically nothing to work with. The decision to make Alina into like a waifish introverted ingenue seemed to be more from the writer’s room. But it’s very telling that they said they had to (paraphrasing) invent a character for Alina because there was none! Not to mention that their take was 200% blander

Like JML’s Alina would never dress up as a racist caricature to sneak into a party, nearly kill herself on screen like twice in ten minutes, or be primarily immune to the Darkling’s “we are fated to be together forever” bullshit because her main priority is hanging out with her silly teen friends that she doesn’t even like very much. Instead you just get a very generic protagonist with very little going on internally. But there at least isn’t much that’s antithetical to how Alina functions as a character, unlike another performance!!

The Darkling being an elusive, aloof, vampire is absolutely integral to his character. I’ve said before, but I think he serves as a deconstruction of how predatory the previous era of paranormal romance trends can come across. It just doesn’t work if there’s zero engagement with that in his portrayal. And there was none! Ben Barnes has spoken a lot on record about how he was involved in trying to make him into a more grounded, real person, and I resent him and his ugly beard for that lol

Ben Barnes just played him as such a woobie. He kept tearing up at the drop of a hat. He was like screaming crying throwing up through that entire show. And he was just so bizarrely uncharismatic, even though I’ve seen him have some gravitas in other roles. Idk I just think it was bad writing, bad direction, bad performance

Anyway I thought Alina being half shu could work! I strongly believe it was a choice made to counter the constant thread of sinophobia in the series (Six of Crows…) And I like how that would tie into her feeling isolated and without real community, hoping the Grisha might be that for her, and then that imploding badly. It also added another element to the Darkling fundamentally not understanding her, and not caring to. It could’ve been a really interesting choice!

The problem is that the handling was very clumsy. The racism portrayed is very on the nose and punishing to sit through. I can respect that if it’s going somewhere, but then in S2 the writers presumably folded after the backlash, and completely dropped it as a plot thread. It disappearing like that makes the incredibly heavy handed racism portrayed in S1 feel so much more pointless and aggravating! It was just very poorly handled