who looked at the newsboy strike of 1899 and went “yeah they should all be doing backflips”
when you grew up as a lonely uncool girl it will never stop haunting you by the way. you will meet a cool person at a bar or the train station or at a friend's party and you can wear your most stylish outfit and striking eye makeup and you will swear that they can see through all of the facade and see the lonely terribly insecure teenage girl you used to be who desperately wanted to connect and you will swear that they know that there is like an insurmountable gap between you. this will happen forever
So true
It doesn't feel right that COTG is part of the "Olympians" series. Therefore I vote that we instead call it Percy Jackson Attempts To Get Into College: A Trilogy
The thing is, I can forgive a lot of it. The scene where Kaz tries to help Inej with her wounds? I guess it was a nice nod to the CK scene, if slightly too soon. The "I will have you without Armour?" Fine. We all wanted to see that anyway. Rushing Wesper into a relationship rather than keeping as the slow-burn from the books? Okay. I really loved them on screen despite that. Kaz beating up the dregs? Definitely could have done without it for obvious reasons, but whatever. I can brush it off.
But the two things that are really grating on me are Kaz's face-off with Pekka Rollins and Inej leaving to hunt slavers. Because the POINT of these things happening towards the end of the second book is that there's a build up.
These characters go through so much. We learn everything about them, we see their struggles and we root for them. We spend SO much time learning about Kaz's thirst for revenge. We see moments where he starts to lose it when it comes to Pekka, and slowly start to learn why. And at the climax of Crooked Kingdom, there's so much on the line. We finally see him snap. There's a build up there of something that he's spent his entire life and two whole books working towards.
The first season of Shadow and Bone consisted of 8 episodes. So we can estimate that the crows had probably less than 4 hours of screen time. And we learned nothing about them, really. They were the mysterious trio that were hired to steal something. And then suddenly S2E1's "Brick by brick" turns into the peak of Kaz's character arc. It takes away the impact and the reasoning behind it.
And the same for Inej. Where is the journey? Where's the trauma that was inflicted by a woman who was truly evil? When we see Inej running into Tante Heleen for the first time in the duology, she freezes. She can't do anything. Are you telling me that the same girl who is so terrified of this woman can face her without a problem?
Again, there's so much of a development here as well. Inej has this realisation and this epiphany about what she wants to do. She wants to hunt down these slavers. She wants to make sure that nobody goes through the same stuff that she did. And when she sees Heleen after that, it's when she slowly starts to lose power over Inej. I mean, she steals the necklace straight from her neck, for crying out loud. Erasing Inej's trauma from S1 was a problem but they dug themselves in a deeper hole by killing off Heleen. She can't go through the journey that she's supposed to. Her entire character arc was just completely erased.
And the thing is, in the duology, Inej still goes through even more hell before she can get free from her indenture. The Ice Court Heist, Van Eck's torture, Dunyasha, etc. And yet... she's free before the start of the heist?
The heist is an important job for each crow. They all have a reason for being there, and they all have something on the line. None of them really think they're going to survive it, but they're trying anyway because, at this point, what do they really have to lose? And for Inej, this is her chance to get the money to leave the barrel. So... are you telling me that she's going to willingly come back to help on a life-threatening job for freedom that she no longer needs? What's going to happen with Kaz now that he's already had that stand-off?
Would love to know because right now I'm as lost as the rest of the book fans.
Kaz Brekker is such an anomaly. Is he a well-written, well-rounded character? Yes. Did he learn his lesson in the end? No. Did he become either better or worse? No. Did he grow as a person? You could say that. Do we have even a remote understanding what he will do next? Absolutely not.
possibly one of my favorite Psych bits is when Shawn introduces Gus by his full real name to people they have confirmed are dangerous in some aspect. like. "you might not be the murderer but you are a murderer. anyway, this is my partner, Burton Guster". why don't you throw his address in there while you're at it
The Prophecy is fulfilled
I don't care if the Crows spin-off is just the six of them acting it out in Freddy's living room while Freddy's wife films it on a phone, I'm willing to pay real money for the footage.
I'm a simple girl; I see disaster characters who are simultaneously dorks and I bring out the adoption papers
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