#the whole cast are malinas tbh

[malyen0retsev]

"We asked them [Kit, Freddy, and Amita] if they are Team Darklina or Malina, and the unanimous response was: ‘We're obviously Team Malina! Come on! I think that when people watch the show they will know there isn't other option. The other guy is a sociopath! [laughs]’, Kit joked."

TodaTeen, https://todateen.uol.com.br/exclusiva-elenco-de-sombra-e-ossos-comenta-sobre-personagens-e-revelam-curiosidades-sobre-as-gravacoes/ (translated by @evanpoters)

[fantasticalmysteryacademia]

Watched SHADOW AND BONE and ohmygod the show was way better than I expected.

One of the best book adaptations to exist.

And the best part? - They removed a lot of sexist clichés from the books and replaced/ changed it w something better. One of them being The Darkling asking Alina for sexual consent.

Also they made Mal somehow likeable in the show.!? I did not like him in the books, can't say that I hated him but he was def annoying.

And don't even get me started on the Darklina scenes, like saints the chemistry!🥵

Ik the Darkling is the bad guy but I still hope for a Darklina endgame. The thing is, when I read the books, the chemistry seemed real and much more passionate between Darklina, though he was the Evil bad guy I still hoped that he might get an redemption arc, but unfortunately he didn't and my hopes were crushed. And a lot of ppl wanted Darklina endgame, and because of how the Darkling's storyline was going in the books, a lot of audience didn't want to continue reading the books, I hope it doesn't happen for the show tho.

In the show, the Darkling is not evil as he was in the books, yet.

And I just truly wish that Netflix and the writers listen to the audience and give him a substantial redemption arc. Malina is sweet but c'mon Darklina is superior, gorgeous, passionate and powerful.

Can Netflix just renew this show for like 10 seasons already!

Also Kaz and Inej ohmygod, I died, dead, literally.

Jesper and Milo carried the show damn.

Genya, Zoya, Marie, Nadia, Baghra, Nina, Ivan, Fedyor were all so perfectly casted.

Amazing, brilliant, gorgeous, breathtaking cast.

The visuals, casting, direction, lgbtq characters, writers, poc and Asian actors -- INCREDIBLE, one of the few Netflix shows which fulfilled my expectations.

Also totally crushing on Amita Suman, the woman is breathtaking. And Ben Barnes that man definitely has my whole heart. Jessie, Archie and Freddy etc, like this cast makes me question my sexuality.

Tbh this show is so good that I can't believe that it's a Netflix production.

Fingers still crossed for a Darkling redemption arc and Darklina endgame.

[him-e]

what did you think of shadow and bone? have you read the books? i only read the duology

Thoughts on Shadow and Bone, now that you've probably seen it?

I think the show is alright? It lacks a real wow factor as far as I’m concerned, but it’s enjoyable. It’s especially enjoyable in those parts I didn’t anticipate to like / didn’t even know would be there. 

Whereas the main selling points leave a lot to be desired.

The good stuff: the visuals. The aesthetic. The overall concept. Production, casting and costumes are excellent, the setting is fascinating. The worldbuilding isn’t perfect and is sometimes confusing, which is probably due to the show jumping ahead of the books and introducing elements that happen much later in the book saga, but I’m loving the vague steampunk-y vibe of it mixed with more typical fantasy stuff and slavic-inspired lore, the fact that it’s set in dystopian Russia rather than your usual ye olde England.

I find it interesting that in this ‘verse the Grisha are simultaneously superstars, privileged elite, legendary creatures and despised outcasts, according to the context and the type of magic they wield. It’s A Lot, and so far it’s all a bit underdeveloped and messy, like a patchwork of different narratives and tropes sewn together without an organic worldbuilding structure. (there are hints to a past when they were hunted, but how did they go from that to being, essentially, an institutionalized asset to the government isn’t clear yet. There’s huge narrative potential in this, and I hope future seasons will delve into those aspects)

Many of the supporting characters are surprisingly solid. I appreciated that Genya and Zoya eventually sort of traded places, subverting the audience’s assumptions about them and their own character stereotypes, despite the little screentime they were given.

Breakout characters/ships for me were Nina/Matthias, and even more so the Crows, i.e. the stuff I didn’t see coming and knew nothing about (having only read the first book). (I thought the entire Crows subplot was handled in a somewhat convoluted way, at least in the first episodes; it was hard to keep track of who wanted Alina and why, but the Crows’ chemistry is so strong it carried the whole Plot B on its shoulders).

HELNIK. As an enemies to lovers dynamic, Helnik was SUPER on the nose, I’d say bordering on clichéd with the unapologetic, straight outta fanfiction use of classic tropes like “we need to team up to survive” and “there’s only one bed and we’ll freeze to death if we don’t take our conveniently damp clothes off and keep each other warm with the heat of our naked bodies” (not that I’m complaining, but i like to pine for my ships a bit before getting to the juicy tropetown part, tyvm). And then they’re suddenly on opposite sides again because of a tragic misunderstanding - does Bardugo hate high-conflict dynamics? It certainly seems so, because between Helnik and Darklina I’m starting to see a pattern where the slow burn and blossoming mutual trust is rushed and painted in broad, stereotypical strokes to get as fast as possible to the part where they *hate each other again* and that’s... huh. Something.

^That’s probably why I’m almost more interested in Kaz x Inej, because their relationship feels a bit more nuanced, a bit more mysterious, and a bit more unpredictable. (I didn’t bother spoiling myself about them, so I really don’t know where they’re going, but it’s refreshing to see a dynamic that the narrative isn’t scrambling to define in one direction or the other as quickly as possible)

-

Now, as for Darklina VS Malina... I found exactly what I expected. 

Both are ship dynamics I’m, on principle, very much into (light heroine/dark villain, pining friends to lovers) but both are also much less interesting than they claim to be, or could have been with different narrative choices. I’ll concede that the show characters are all more fleshed out and likable than their book counterparts, and the cringe parts I vaguely remembered from the books played out differently. And, well, Ben Barnes dominates the scene, he’s hot as HELL, literally every single second he’s on screen is a fuck you to Bardugo’s attempts to make his character lame and uninteresting and I’m LOVING it, lol.

But yeah, B Barnes aside, Darklina is intrinsically, deliberately made to be unshippable. 

It makes me mad, because it’s - archetypally speaking - made of shipping dynamite: yin/yang-sun and moon, opposites attract, COMPLEMENTARY POWERS AND SO ON. And what does Bardugo do with these ingredients? A FUCKING DELIBERATE DISASTER:

^ Placing the kiss so early on (season 1, episode five) effectively kills the romantic tension that was (correctly) building up until that point, and leaves the audience very little to still hope for, in terms of emotional evolution of the dynamic. 

Bardugo lays all the good stuff down as early and quickly as possible (the bonding, the conflicted attraction, the recognizing the other as one’s equal, etc) only to turn the tables and pull the rug so y’all sick creepyshippers won’t have anything to look forward to, because THEY’VE ALREADY HOOKED UP AND THAT BELONGS TO THE PAST, IT’S OVER, THEY’RE ENEMIES. This, combined to the fact that she falls for him *without* knowing who he really is, is the opposite of what I want from a heroine/villain ship (it’s basically lovers to enemies, and while that can be valid too, I wanted to see more pining and more prolonged, tormented symbolic attraction to the Shadow/Animus on Alina’s part). 

But here’s the trick: it’s not marketed as lovers to enemies - it has all the aesthetics and trappings of an enemies to lovers (the Darkling is, from the get go, villain-presenting, starting from his name), so it genuinely feels like a trollfic, or at the very least a cautionary tale *against* shipping the heroine with the tall dark brooding young villain, and I don’t think it’s cool at all. It makes the story WAY less interesting, because it humanizes the villain early on (when it’s not yet useful or poignant to the story, because it’s unearned) but it’s a red herring. The real plot twist is that the villain shouldn’t be sympathized with, just defeated: there’s a promise of nuanced storytelling, that is quickly denied and tossed aside. So is the idea of incorporating your Shadow (a notion that Bardugo must be familiar with, otherwise she wouldn’t have structured Alina and the Darkling as polar opposites who complement each other, but that she categorically refutes)

Then we have Malina. The good ship.

Look, I’m not that biased against it. I don’t want to be biased on principle against a friends to lovers dynamic that antagonizes a heroine/villain one, because every narrative is different, and for personal reasons I can deeply relate to the idea of being (unspeakably) in love with your best friend. So there are aspects of Malina that I can definitely be into, but it troubles me that in this specific context it’s framed as a regression. It’s Alina’s comfort zone, a fading dream of happiness from an idealized childhood, to sustain which the heroine systematically stunts her growth and literally repressed her own powers, something that in the books made her sickly and weak. But the narrative weirdly romanticizes this codependency, often making her tunnel vision re: going back to Mal her primary goal and centering on him her entire backstory/motivation, to the point that when she starts acting more serious re: her powers and alleged mission to destroy the Fold, it feels inorganic and unearned. 

Mal is intrinsically extraneous to Alina’s powers, he doesn’t share them, he doesn’t understand them, he has little to offer to help her with them, and so the feeling is that he’s also extraneous to her heroine’s journey, aside from being a sort of sidekick or safe harbor to eventually come back to. People have compared him to Raoul from Phantom of the Opera, and yeah, he has the same ~magic neutralizer~ vibe, tbh.

The narrative also polarizes Mal’s normalcy and relative “safety” against Aleksander’s sexy evil, framing Alina’s quasi-platonic fixation on the former as a better and purer form of love than her (much more visible and palpable) attraction to the latter. This is exacerbated by the show almost entirely relying on scenes of them as kids to convey their bond. I’m sure there are ways to depict innocent pining for your best friend that don’t involve obsessively focusing on flashbacks of two CHILDREN running in a meadow and looking exactly like brother and sister. LIKE. I get it, they’re like soulmates in every possible way, BUT DO THEY WANT TO KISS EACH OTHER?

Which brings me to a general complain: for a young adult saga centering on a young heroine and full of so many hot people, this story is weirdly unsexy? There are a lot of shippable dynamics, but they’re done in such a careless, ineffective way that makes ZERO EFFORT to work on stuff like slow burn, pining and romantic tension, and when it does it’s so heavy handed that the viewer doesn’t feel encouraged at all to fill the blanks with their imagination and start anticipating things (which is, imo, the ESSENCE of shipping). The one dynamic that got vaguely close to this is, again, Kaz and Inej, and coincidentally it’s also the one we didn’t get confirmed as romantic YET. Other than that, where’s the slow burn? What ship am I supposed to agonize over during the hiatus to season two? Has shipping become something to feel ashamed of, like an embarrassing relative you no longer want to invite in your home?

Anyway, back to Alina/Darkling/Mal, this is how the story reads to me:

girl suspects to be special, carefully pretends to be normal so she can stay with Good Boy

the girl’s powers eventually manifest; she’s forcibly separated from Good Boy

the girl’s powers attract Bad Boy who is her equal and opposite but is also a major asshole

girl initially falls for Bad Boy; has to learn a hard lesson that nobody that sexy will ever want her for who she is, he’s just trying to exploit her

also, no, there is no such thing as a Power Couple

girl is literally given a slave collar by Bad Boy through which he harnesses her power (a parody of the Twin Scars trope)

you know how the story initially suggested that the joint powers of Darkness and Light would defeat evil? LOL NO, Darkness is actually evil itself and the way you destroy evil is using Light to destroy Darkness, forget that whole Jungian bullshit of integrating your shadow, silly!

conclusion: girl realizes being special sucks. She was right all along! Hiding and suppressing her powers was the best choice! She goes back to the start, to the same Good Boy she was meekly pining for prior to the start of the story.

... there’s an uncomfortable overall subtext that reads a lot like a cautionary tale against - look, not just against darkships and villain/heroine pairings, but also *overpowered* heroines and, well... change? Growth?

Like, it’s certainly a Choice that Alina starts the story *already* in love with Mal. That she always knew it was him. The realization could have happened later (making the dynamic much more shippable, too), but no. 

[slytheringoddess-945]

Shadow and Bone Rant

*warning spoilers for the tv series and the books (including six of crows and crooked kingdom)*

first of all i did like mal slightly better in the show, he was slightly less insufferable, but then again we do have the events lf siege and storm next so you never know. anyways i did ship malina slightly more then i did when i read the books

i literally forgot how much i love matthias and nina until i watched them together. i loved their relationship dynamic and getting a look at the relationship before the events of six of crows. also the scene where they were eating waffles was great

um kaz calling jesper and inej his crows was absolutely everything

basically that trios entire relationship dynamic was amazing

kanej!!!!!

also zoya and inej working together was something i had no idea i needed until i saw it

i feel like they should've showed sturmhond on the ship they were all on in the last scene

ben barnes as the darkling was just perfection

the whole general kirigan bullshit was stupid just call him the darkling

random, but i just loved feydor

jesper was my favorite character (in the books it was inej) he was really funny and kit young did a fantastic job playing him

wylan should have been there. hands down. i would have loved to see wylan and jespers flirty dynamic and the lack of wylan was a bit disappointing

the scene where kaz fought the darkling and disappeared in a literal puff of smoke was everything

the casting in general was amazing and tbh it was eight straight episodes of bi panic

im honestly really excited to see how they combine the crows into the story of shadow and bone moving forward

anyways those are just some of my thoughts on the series i just needed to rant a bit. if you've gotten this far have a nice day :)

[sheikah]

i get what the other anon was saying about mal and to an extent i agree w/ them (about how the internet will fawn over the white guy) BUT i also wanna say i know your love for aleksander is legit and was way before casting was even announced so! people connect with different characters. and tbf, there are definitely very vocal malina stans on here, so it's not like 'the whole internet' will get behind the white dude. i've seen A LOT of love for mal already since the trailer dropped ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thank you! That's exactly what I'm trying to say basically I had my faves before the casting was a thing and it has just persisted. And Mal is getting a LOT of love. I've seen some beautiful Mal and Malina edits when filling the queue for my sourceblog and this before we even have episodes of the show so I think there is going to be a nice variety of stans and content creators. And tbh overall it seems that Inej is the most popular character--as she should be 😌 So I'm not too worried.

[mermaidsirennikita]

I mean it sucks for the rest of the cast but I'm not seeing a whole lotta excitement or discussion for the non Darkling parts of the show beyond the book fans. The rest of the show is pretty weak with a few highlights here and there. So having more Darkling and his dynamic with Alina makes a lot of sense. I mean they were by far the most popular and interesting part of the Shadow and Bone trilogy. Idk about endgame though since Leigh seems so be pretty involved and she really hates darklina.

I think it depends on what you’re following and who you’re following—my friends saw a lot of malina on their dashes, I see none on mine for example. I mean, a lot of what fandom has already built up from the books is obviously Darkling/Darklina centric. The show got surprisingly good reviews bc I found it to be quite mixed; but yeah lol a lot of that was around Ben and the Darkling as well as Jessie. Tbh I really liked a lot of the cast’s work aside from a few; but the writing was rough in a good few spots, especially the rewriting of Mal.

But like I said—Leigh may seem heavily involved, but she’s only a producer. Which ultimately is often a vanity title for authors. I would be surprised if she’s as involved moving forward; authors are often at first brought on to adaptations to curry favor with fans and slowly get pushed to the side a bit. I think the endgame will likely stay the same, but she may just have to deal with some changes until then. And the thing .... is.... LOL Leigh knows how sausage is made. She brought the Darkling back. She knows what sells. It’s a complex issue.

[bagofbonesmp3]

shadow and bone s1 thoughtsies

gonna put this under the cut bc i don’t wanna annoy anyone <3 also bear in mind i only read the six of crows duology so any grisha trilogy opinions are biased <3

overall rating of the show: 7/10. it was really fun and i had :0 moments constantly

pros, aka things i liked:

- alina and mal. as far as im told they’re very annoying and without chemistry in the books so i applaud them for making them more interesting and nuanced and i rooted for them the whole time

- the aging up. tbh if they had tried to make this a ya series i would have started to beat some people up because alina and the darkling’s realtionship just gets really fucking awful if she’s a 17 year old kid so im glad they’re all in their 20s now. especially for the crows bc there is really no reason they had to be teens in the books even, they all act like theyre 24 already.

- most of the cast. they were really good. jessie mei lin and archie renaux were surprisingly fun. ben barnes as the darkling was such a good choice because he is literally older than the rest of the cast and that made him even creepier. i dont know much about the shadow and bone characters but bregha seemed great to me too.

- the story from the shadow and bone aspect. it was really well paced, i liked those flashbacks and the way alina started to get more and more submersed into the little palace world, how she started to forget who she was little by little.

- malina. the ONE LINERS THEY THREW AT EACH OTHER. WOW. love.

- the worldbuilding. the magic and the locations felt so alive and refreshing after swallowing got for like 5 years. effervescent.

- VERY good ending, i liked the high stakes, i was gripping my seat.

cons, aka things i didn’t quite like:

- the fucking. six of crows storyline. what was the reason!! what was the reason!! asides from them trying to ponder to the soc fans, there was really no motivation for them to be there. if you took all of their scenes away the show wouldn’t change?? we can have a miniseries spinoff guys we dont need the weird combo. i would have allowed the nina matthias storyline even but why drag the rest of them here?????

- kaz. this is not my boy! this is not my boy. the actor they chose.... i don’t vibe with him. who are you. also his characterization was all over the place this is not scheming face brekker this is some common white boy! also not relevant for his character technically but relevant for ME. why arent his eyes brown. i feel that was an important thing why arent his eyes brown like bitter coffee

- also this has been bothering me since the cast was announced but nina. what happened here.

- i have to mention the weird racism. like. again i haven’t read the grisha trilogy, were they this anti shu in the books? like, in the soc books there is the casual microagression and small shit but this was so??? and also i dont understand why zoya was being fantasy world racist against alina because as far as i know zoya is a brown woman? so like? its very strange and clunky and im thinking it would have been better if they scraped that whole subplot

- alina’s shu heritage. this is kinda connected with the point above. im glad they had an actress of color play alina, because im tired of white ya protagonists, but this whole “they bully me” subplot felt kinda lacking? like, i would have liked to see her react more about the anti shu sentiment, speak more about it, also her reaction with the instructor who was shu, or her speaking to other poc that were part of the second army like??? we could have explored that a lot more and given her depth? and also the fact that there are no other shu in this season was odd. one would think they’d be interested in the fact that the sun summoner is half shu

- the first two episodes were a little bit Too Much because they were trying to throw all of this info at you and things were happening at the same time. which wouldnt have happened if you didnt have all of that kidnapping plot to begin with!!

- just. the amount of characters they had left the secondary characters feeling too flat. they should have focused on the shadow and bone characters and nothing else!!!!

[hermitknut]

Things I loved about ASOUE s2, in no particular order

under a cut for spoilers

1. Sunny swearing in French

2. Everything about toddler Sunny, tbh, from the “it feels like we’ve been here months” joke at the start, through the way she’s a dynamic part of the cast, all the way to her Chabo Wolf-Baby stuff. <3

3. THE MUSICAL NUMBERS. How hard do you think it is for nph to deliberately not sing well but also well enough to keep it from being too unpleasant to listen to? Like, that’s a fine fucking line to walk and he does it Every Time. 

4. WHAT CAN’T BE BEATEN? A DEAD HORSE.

5. Lemony and Jacques in the car, whistling. My heart. My soul. 

6. Lemony in the box on the lamb XD

7. THAT FINAL SHOT OF KIT.

8. Every single one of Esme’s outfits. 

9. Actually, every outfit in the whole show tbh. The Baudelaires were super cute.

10. The way they did the disguises at the carnival!!!!

11. All the references to “this season” throughout the show, like repeated pick-axes through the fourth-wall.

12. THEY DID THE IN THE DARK IN THE DARK TANGENT, which is my FAVOURITE of tangents

13. Patrick Warburton pronouncing the line about things that are easier done than said, which was just flat-out impressive

14. Hostile Hospital was deeply unsettling without being too different in tone from the rest of the episodes.

15. The whole scene in the operating theatre, holy shit.

16. Klaus’s FACE when Olaf shows up, especially in Austere Academy, good god the boy is fuming and wants you to know about it and I love that. I love that they get to be so angry about everything. 

17. Continuing with Klaus, there are several scenes where Klaus gets to play the “we’re both in on this so play along” game with Olaf (particularly in the Squalor’s apartment and the operating theatre) and it’s so. goddamn. satisfying. Like, he’s forcing Olaf to treat him on an equal level, if only for a few minutes, and it’s GREAT.

18. VIOLET. Just Violet. In and of herself. Malina Weissman’s performance is brilliant, particularly when you see her reacting to problems over the course of the season - how much more desperate she gets, how you can see her clinging on to her skills and pulling through every goddamn time. 

19. the entirety of Olivia Caliban’s arc. I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about it, but I really like how it turned out.

20. I have mixed? feelings? about bald man and henchperson not dying? because like, I love them (a lot) but I also love the books’ unremitting “people die” thing and that it usually applies to both sides. That said, this series has done so well that I’m willing to trust it and just see where it goes from here. (on the same note, see: Olaf’s apparent lack of interest in the sugar bowl)

21. Mr Poe likes sad clowns. Of course he fucking does. And also: “maybe you should see someone about that cough.” “what cough?”

22. Esme pushing them down the elevator shaft was pitch-perfect.

23. Sunny fucking. not even sneaking past hooky to get rope. and then just fucking throwing herself back down the shaft.

24. REFERENCES. SO MANY REFERENCES. To Fiona (!), to ‘Who Could That Be At This Hour?’ (!!), to Stain’d-by-the-Sea (!!!) and all the other ones that I undoubtedly will only pick up on after seeing everyone else’s gifsets.

25. The sugar bowl is in the credits now! And also, Olaf fucking up the line in the credits for... I think it’s Carnivorous Carnival p2? Like, he just hesitates over the last line and it cracks me up.

26. did anyone else ship jacques and larry for a few minutes during the freezer scene, because damn.

27. CARMELITA omg I love her. She’s so hateful and it’s so much fun.

28. DOCTOR FAUSTUS bless you klaus. Also arguing about Oxford being a real place.

29. All of the Olaf and Jacques interaction. 

...there are at least a hundred more things, but these will do for now XD

[silhouettecrow]

I cannot believe how behind I got on this. At least I don't think anyone following me cares about this, but I'm still a bit disappointed in myself, even if I have schoolwork as an excuse 😔

13. Jesper and Nina (without a doubt)

14. Malina (at least that's a healthy relationship)

15. Can I just say I absolutely adore the whole cast, tbh? (Low-key Kit, but I do love all of them)

16. It's been a while, but I do remember really enjoying Siege and Storm more than the other two, although not by much

17. As in not a good villain: Sankta Lizabeta. As in I absolutely hate them: Pekka Rollins, Jan Van Eck, and the Darkling

Hey, you can try this as a countdown of your own if you like! By the way, this is not mine. I am going to be doing it on @blackpheonix though.

~Jaden