But like Zoya, this is dismantled in the books. If Zoya is set up to be the Beautiful Mean Girl, Genya is set up to be the Beautiful Fool. Unlike Zoya, who is undoubtedly powerful in the books, Genya’s ability to beautify and alter appearances is dismissed as in-universe trivial – even if it is more precise and technical than most realize. Even if future seasons delve more into Zoya’s character, what’s been set up so far doesn’t even establish her as a central character. Alina does put her in charge of training the Grisha at the end of the show, but she doesn’t feel like she deserved it. Instead, she gets a speech from Nina about opening her heart to love. She’s sent off to babysit the Crows in Shu Han, which is her own struggle, yes, but one that doesn’t showcase her abilities as a leader, or show the complex relationship between her and Alina. We barely see her interacting with Alina, or even see the side of her that is supposed to step up and lead the military. Her ultimate fate in the most recent books completely dismantles the tropes she initially represented.īut in the show, this is all brushed off as Zoya isn’t even around for most of the war. She is never watered down and rarely villains, even as she learns to lean on other people and let them in. When she stars in the Nikolai duology, with her own POV chapters, she’s smart, ambitious and capable – but she also never compromises on her fierceness and caustic attitude. Eventually, Zoya becomes Alina’s trusted ally, and Alina appoints her to a high leadership position in the final book.
Zoya is mean and beautiful, yes, and she kisses the boys Alina likes, but she is also intelligent, cunning, a skilled military leader, and fiercely loyal to her country. As Bardugo’s characterization improved, so did characters who initially came across as one note. That makes her ultimate arc all the more satisfying.īy the end of the first series, it’s clear that there’s more to Zoya than just being a mean girl.
She is the epitome of the Beautiful Mean Girl trope, existing in contrast to our more relatable protagonist.
#Zoya shadow and bone netflix series
A lot of the Shadow and Bone series got bogged down by little romantic jealousy arcs like this one, and it has Zoya’s character holding the bag. In her very first appearance in shadow and bones, Zoya is presented as arrogant, beautiful and jealous of the attention the Darkling gives to Alina (while Alina is jealous that Zoya hugged Mal). Due to Alina’s limited first-person perspective – not to mention Bardugo’s fledgling writing – Zoya in particular initially suffers the most from reductive tropes. In the first book, Alina constantly emphasizes her own plain appearance so that anyone who is beautiful becomes someone she cannot identify with. When Leigh Bardugo introduces Genya and Zoya in the first Shadow and Bone books, she puts a lot of emphasis on their beauty. In the show, it’s the tropes, not the deconstruction, and any nuance their arcs would have takes a backseat to the more traditionally exciting characters. In the books, they both represent a deconstruction of what we typically expect from the YA tribal character of the Beautiful Cool Girl. collateral damage, their storylines reduced to almost nothing. To add to the ever-popular Six of Crows characters and accelerate Alina’s quest to defeat the Darkling, two of the books’ most dynamic female characters, Genya Safin (Daisy Head) and Zoya Nazyalensky (Sujaya Dasgupta), were added. And yes, as long as the core of the story is respected, changes can be good.īut when it comes to the second season of Shadow and bone, it’s clear which characters the writers understand and which have been reconstructed to be used as puzzle pieces in the larger frame.
That’s the credo many fans of Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse books have adopted in the Netflix adaptation Shadow and bone, one that the showrunners also proudly proclaim. As long as an adaptation maintains the spirit of the characters and story, changes and timeline shifts aren’t the end of the world.
0 kommentar(er)
