#I haven't watched S2 since it came out bc I didn't enjoy it but I'm 99% sure it was insinuated she didn't know | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

xnervouscircus · 1 year

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i didn't know if i was gonna bother watching shadow & bone s2 since general reviews were basically: "it's CRAP" but watched it on a whim this week and am mostly happy with it actually

preface that i only read the og grisha trilogy and haven't read the crow books or whatever the heck came next that i think starred nikolai? so i only vaguely remember the story of alina and co and know little to nothing about the jurda parem storyline and where it's going and who will be involved or at least was involved in the books

but man. just from the perspective of someone who was immensely displeased with the ending of the grisha trilogy: I LOVE THIS ENDING. they fixed my biggest beefs with the og ending, and up until the very last scene i was like "ah still a shame alina never went darkside though" aND THEN THEY WENT AND SAID "BITCH SHE MIGHT" HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I LOVE IT

in the books i haaaaated the implication that mal and alina were only together bc of ~destiny~ and they were only drawn to each other by the firebird power and even after knowing that, they didn't question it at all and were just like, "welp the universe tossed us together so guess this is it for us huh." so not only do i love show!mal more in general--they fixed up his personality so much and made me actually mostly like malina--but i wanted to kiss him on the mouth for being the one to bring up the whole destiny thing and give themselves a chance to figure out who they are without it. and i wanted to kiss alina on the mouth for accepting and understanding it. i would absolutely not hate malina being endgame in this universe the way i hated it in the books.

though i'm confused if alina is still engaged to nikolai now? she gave the ring back to him a while ago so i figured that was the end of it, but at the end the apparat made it sound like the betrothal was still on, and alina was wearing that very elaborate tiara/crown and stood beside nikolai at his coronation so. nikolina still possible?

though i will say that i really didn't feel any chemistry between them in the show and they were portrayed much more as friends than potential love interests. honestly i loved it. love triangles are exhausting enough, having to deal with 3 potential love interests in the trilogy was just. blaaaargh. as much as i loved nikolina in the books, i was kind of happy that i felt nothing for them in the show and it seemed like i wasn't supposed to. they really just came across as allies doing their best for the country, friends at most. there were a few moments that kiiiiind of came across as potential romance, but there was nothing to make me be like "fuck yeah nikolina." since they made mal 2.0 so much better, i genuinely enjoyed not seeing nikolai as legitimate love interest material lmao. but i could be into it in the future if there's a s3 and they decide to go that route.

i was worried the condensed storyline would be crap since i knew they were apparently putting all of books 2 & 3 into this season, alongside whatever the crows would be doing, but it worked so much better than what i vaguely remember of the books. book 3 was pretty much all meaningless page filler of the group being trapped underground and then going on a completely pointless hike to look for the firebird, so i'm glad they cut all that out. i liked the addition of the blade, if only to expand the world more and show us another living saint--go be besties with her alina. and really the best parts of both s1 and s2 were the crows. sorry i haven't read your books guys but y'all are the best. i fuckign love inej and nina and of course my gay little heart was so very happy with jesper and wylan and wesper.

(i do mostly like kaz, he's clever and witty and really cares about his crows, but sometimes he's just a bit too edgelord for me. i kinda like kanej but at the same time i think inej deserves a hell of a lot of happiness and kanej is just all angst all the time and after 2 full seasons of it i'm kinda over it lol. i was honestly super into that extremely brief hint of . . . inya? tolej? lmao. but yeah tolya/inej honestly sounds amazing to me. ofc i hope kaz can deal with his trauma and be more open--not even in regards to touch necessarily, but just be less consumed with grief and revenge in general. but his whole life is shaped around it and inej has dealt with enough shit and i just want her to be able to laugh and have some genuine fun, ya know??)

it wasn't perfect, and a lot of the dialogue made me cringe (i'm still facepalming but also laughing over that one scene where some grisha girl started saying, "i'd hoped--" and seemed like she was just gonna say some bland thing like i'd hoped this would be over or even just i'd hoped i'd get to sleep in an actual bed tonight but the darkling interrupted her with this completely angsty and overdramatic monologue about hope LMAO CALM DOWN EDGELORD IT WASN'T THAT DEEP). but overall i thought it was good! s1 was better but s2 made a lot of improvements to the books and i appreciate that they were willing to deviate and take risks to try to make a better story.

what i loved the absolute most wasn't just that they changed her love story, i loved that they changed the entire ending of alina's story. because the trilogy ending for her was TRASH. a woman becomes the most powerful person in the world, comes to embrace and revel in her power, but her endgame love interest won't stop sulking about it so guess she's gotta lose all her power and suddenly want nothing more than a quiet life on a farm. LMAO WHAT. it was absolutely infuriating and still is almost 20 years later lmao. having her stay in the capital and plan to actually help the country she worked so hard and sacrificed so much to save makes infinitely more sense; sure, at the beginning of the trilogy she wished she wasn't grisha or the sun summoner, but she comes to love the power and the realization that she can save ravka with it. as far as i remember, once she embraces it, she never wishes it away again. so it just felt grossly unfeminist and lame to take her power away in the trilogy and pretend that actually she secretly desired being no one in the middle of nowhere just raising a bunch of orphans. nope, that was just not alina.

so i am LIVING for her still having her power (though i'm not sure if she's got all that fully amplified power or she's basically reset to pre-amplifiers power after destroying the fold? i wish they'd cleared that up) and continuing to follow her dream to reunite ravka and make a more peaceful world for the grisha, rather than just run away with her endgame boy ugh.

BUT WHAT I'M LIVING FOR THE MOST WAS WATCHING HER FINALLY DO THE CUT AND REVEAL THAT SHE'S GOT SHADOW MAGIC NOW AND RATHER THAN BEING SCARED OR DISGUSTED BY WHAT SHE'D DONE SHE WAS FUCKING RELISHING IT

DARKLINA LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOO

(i just mean that in a dark alina sense, though i would not at all be opposed to the darkling coming back to life and making couple darklina a thing lmao)

do i believe they'll actually make her go anywhere near actually dark? no. do i believe her endgame boy will be anyone but mal? no. do i believe they won't ultimately have her story end the same as in the trilogy? not really tbh. but at least there's some possibility here and it could turn out really interesting, or at least more satisfying than the og trilogy.

so yeah i hope s3 gets the green light. at the very least, i'd definitely love to have more of the crows.

#shadow and bone #spoilers

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handonhaven · 3 years

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I wasn't planning on talking about this, but ever since the trailer and the summery of episode 1 came out certain people have gone into overdrive. Pretty much all the same stuff they always say. "Hope should just dump Landon, he doesn't deserve her love and devotion" 😑😑😑 and "They made Hopes whole story just be about a boy. Why does Landon/Handon get so much screen time over all the other characters?" Etc etc.

Okay look Landon is the only one who's actaully earned Hopes love and devotion. Everyone else just acts as if they're entitled to it. With how they always treat her(very unpopular opinion I know but it's true).

Hopes story has never been all about Landon. It's always been about saving everyone else, doing what's best for everyone. Even if it means sacrificing herself and what she wants/what makes her happy. Season 3 was the first season she actively put herself and what she wants first(and even then she still was doing what was best for everyone else at times). And a part of that just so happens to be Landon because she loves him and he's the one who makes her the most happy. And in 3x05 when Hope was in the therapy box was a whole give a way. That she's just tried and done always putting herself last and sacrificing what she loves(ie Landon and what else she just doesn't want to sacrifice anymore) just to save everyone else. And I honestly don't blame her for some of the things she did in s3, not excusing what she did not at all. But at the same time I don't blame her.

Now what I'm about to say might upset some people but there's two reason why Landon/Handon gets so much screen time is bc 1. Landon is a lead and at the very core of legacies is Handons story, so of course they'll be getting more screen time. And I think 3x16 was trying to drive that home of a lot of people. As well as about a 100 other that have been shown/said throughout the show.

2. The other reason why other characters don't get much screen time or even a storyline is bc more often than not is bc the writers/showrunners just don't really care all that much for those characters. One example of that is Rafael. And as much as I love his character, you can just tell the feeling wasn't the same for them. Bc he was gone for must of s2 and when he was around they made him be all about his feelings for Hope. Same thing goes for the twins. You can just tell that they didn't really want to have them in the show in first place(even Juile herself said she didn't want the twins. But things change I guess). Because they've haven't been doing anything with their characters, they've done more with Cleo's character than they have with the twins. I think the most I've seen them do with the twins was the whole dark Josie storyline. The rest of the time their storylines have been about love interests. I'm not sure if I forgot any of their other storylines bc once s3 hit I just kind of stopped paying attention to their storylines(not bc I don't like their characters but bc their stories just kind of just keep going around in circles and I really don't want to watch the same thing over and over again). And idk if in season 4 they're going to start giving the twins and other characters more screen time/ more storylines but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't.

Wow sorry that got long haha. But any thoughts on this?

It’s just the same old thing with the antis, can they really not think of anything else to say? But yeah, everything you said. What is it Landon has to do to earn Hope’s love and devotion? You’re so right, he treats Hope far better than any of the other characters do, unpopular opinion or not, that’s the truth. He’s not done anything that’s made him undeserving of her love. And for them to even say that after he went his whole life without being loved is horrible. And I’m so tired of them saying Hope’s storyline revolves around a boy (especially when all most of them want is for her storyline to revolve around Josie), because exactly! They must not be paying attention to the show if they don’t see that Hope’s storyline has always been about her being the hero and saving everyone. Which is why them saying that Landon is all Hope cares about and all she thinks about contradicts her actions throughout the show when she has continuously been there for everyone. And yep, to the point where she has sacrificed her own happiness with Landon for the sake of everyone else. And yes, I loved Hope’s development in s3 because she was finally putting herself and her happiness first. And that didn’t mean that she no longer cared about her friends because, like you said, she was still trying to be there for them and do what was best for them too. And exactly, Landon is the one who makes Hope happy, and I felt so bad for her in the therapy box in 3x05. That really did say it all, you could definitely tell that she’s so tired and just wants to be happy for once. And same with in 3x10, when she said “we can never just be happy,” it never seems to end for her. And I don’t blame her for what she did in s3 either. And you’ve also gotta consider that everyone had pushed her into a position where she was most desperate and left with no other options. Plus she also didn’t even think Lizzie or Josie would be in danger in 3x08, and she believed they could make it until the dark magic started to infect them and then she apologized. But what she did still ultimately ended up saving Landon from the prison world, otherwise they may never have found another way if they hadn’t created a rift.

And very true about screen time for Handon. People still refuse to believe that Landon is the male lead despite Aria’s name appearing right after Danielle’s in the credits and Julie literally saying that they casted Aria to be the leading man of Legacies when he auditioned for TO. Both Hope and Landon are the leads of the show, and yep, their story is the main story, so obviously it’s gonna get more focus. And yes, that’s been made clear throughout the show.

It does seem like the writers don’t care as much about the other characters. And I love Raf too, don’t get me started on the way they treated him. And it’s so weird because it seemed like they had bigger plans for him at the beginning. It took them a while to find Peyton, if I remember right. And I thought he and Landon were gonna be the brothers of the show, it seemed like they were setting up a love triangle of sorts with them and Hope (not that I wanted that), but then, like you said, he was hardly in s2. It’s like they scrapped any plans they had for him and didn’t know what to do with him after s1, even though there was so much potential.

And yeah, same with the twins. But idk if Julie said she didn’t want the twins on the show? I just thought having them on the show, at least as mains, wasn’t always part of the plan. They had always talked about a “Hope spinoff,” no mention of the twins. Julie had said Hope and the twins wouldn’t be friends because of the age gap. And from 5x12 of TO, I’d guess they hadn’t planned on them being mains for Legacies at that point either, otherwise they wouldn’t have made the age gap so obvious. And they had no interactions between Hope and the twins either, yet they made sure to establish a relationship between Hope and Landon in that episode. So I do feel like Handon was always part of the plan and they most likely decided to have the twins be main characters later on. And that really does show because they don’t seem to know what to do with them anymore either. True, they definitely did more with Cleo last season than the twins, and I do feel like the dark Josie storyline was the last real storyline they had. And I agree, their storylines now mostly have to do with love interests, and they do feel repetitive or just like they’re not going anywhere. And people will complain about Handon being repetitive, but look at what they do with the other characters, it’s far worse. Despite there being some repetition with Handon, like with them being separated and being put through horrible things all the time, there’s still development and progression. But with the rest of the characters, I feel like there’s hardly any progression at all. I feel like they’ve even gone backwards with some of the characters as well, especially last season. I actually thought the writing for the twins, and all the characters, was pretty good in s1. I liked all the characters and was interested in their storylines, but now, especially after s3, I’m just not interested anymore. S3 really changed my mind about some of the characters tbh, mostly because of the way they treated Landon and Hope. So idk if they’re gonna give the other characters more screen time or better storylines in s4 either. But honestly, because some of the characters have kinda been ruined for me, I’m not even sure if I’d care much if they did give them more of a storyline. I’m really just watching for Hope and Landon at this point, ngl. But hopefully, for everyone else’s sake, they can do more for the other characters next season that other fans will enjoy.

#answered

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