tashie | t-2 days until COUNTING DOWN WITH YOU (@tashiebhuiyan) February 26, 2021
Many of us who grew up in the ’00s will remember Mr Ben Barnes from his formative role as the titular Prince Caspian in
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. I say formative because it was very formative for me to leave the cinema after seeing the film in 2008 knowing that, actually, I was attracted to men. Especially, when that man was Ben Barnes.
For those of you who perhaps didn’t spend the last 13 years pining over Ben Barnes’ screen roles, Barnes found his complexly-sexy-villain-adjacent niche long ago when he played Dorian Gray in the 2009 film,
Shadow and Bone and the Trickiness of Navigating Trauma in Fandom
By Princess WeekesMay 3rd, 2021, 12:37 pm
Over the weekend, I decided to finally watch Netflix’s
Shadow and Bone, which was a lot of fun and a very quick watch. After finishing it, I dipped my toe into the discourse waters and saw many familiar discussions, with people wondering how anyone could like the character of The Darkling (Ben Barnes) and discussing the relationship between him and Alina (DarkAlina) and whether it is “romanticizing [a] manipulating abuser.”
This subject is always a hard one to tackle because there is always this desire to over-explain everything and prove that you are not “pro abusers,” because that becomes the stakes in this discourse. The questions become “Are you pro-abuse?” and “Do you think manipulation is sexy?” and “[Blank] reminds me of my abuser, so are you saying my abuser is sexy?”
CinemaBlend
Netflix subscribersâ latest obsession is
Shadow and Bone, an epic adaptation of Leigh Bardugoâs YA book franchise. The series follows the story of Alina Starkov, a teen orphan who finds out she has powers that can change her home of Ravka as she knows it. She learns to harness her light through the help of Ben Barnesâ mysterious General Alexander Kirigan, later revealed as the Darkling. The series allowed for the complex character to be updated for TV in clever ways.
When
Shadow and Bone hit streaming, book fans noticed the Darkling was going by another name than they knew him by. General Kirigan is not among the named characters in the expansive Grishaverse books, but adding this facade to the Darkling character did allow for Ben Barnes to deepen the character. Hereâs what the actor told CinemaBlend:
specific type of internet boyfriend, because if you ask the average person who Ben Barnes is, their answer would probably be “Who?”
Thanks to his breakout role as the title character in 2008’s
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (the quintessential fantasy prince, complete with shiny hair and a poet shirt), Barnes became crush-material for a generation of tweens. Thirteen years later, his career has come full circle, playing the menacingly attractive General Kirigan (aka the Darkling) in
Shadow and Bone. And we partly have fandom to thank for that, because Barnes has long been a popular casting choice among fans of
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From Alina’s childhood memories of Keramzin to the menacing Fold that pervades the characters’ lives, the first few moments of Netflix’s
Shadow and Bone makes it clear that this show not only understands the source material but has successfully elevated and enhanced the characters and overall world. The series, like the books it’s based on, is compelling and propulsive, taking viewers on remarkably human and fantastical eight-episode journey.
Shadow and Bone is set in a world at war. For Ravka, a fragile country inspired by Czarist Russia, hope for its people exists in the destruction of the Shadow Fold, a swath of terrible and deadly darkness that has split the country in two. Ravka depends on its Grisha elite soldiers with powers from their practice the Small Sciences. Their abilities shift and manipulate matter to protect them and keep the darkness at bay.