shadow daddies of history
the history of shadow daddies is a storied one 🙂↕️ how did we get here? where did they come from? where will they go? where did they come from cotton eye joe?
so get ready for shadow daddy history class! here, we will explore the history of shadow daddies: from the predecessors, the addition of powers, and the future 🤓
created by maomi
last updated August, 2026
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the timeline put together with the help of many boundlings on this 🔗post:
Tall Dark and Brooding™️ era (the predecessors): lord byron (the guy) (1788) pride and prejudice (1813) 🎀 by jane austen jane eyre (1847) by charlotte bronte batman (1939) 🎀 by bill finger and bob kane divergent (2011) by veronica roth
Heathcliff™️: wuthering heights (1847) by emily bronte
Powers™️ era (with powers but not shadow powers): dracula (1897) by bram stoker elric of melnibone (1972) by michael moorcock interview with a vampire (1976) by anne rice the darkangel (1982) by meredith ann pierce the awakening (1991) by lj smith dark visions (1994) by lj smith twilight (2005) by stephanie meyer
Shadow Daddy™️ era (with the shadow powers): hades, thanatos, erebus (8th century bce) first mentioned in the iliad and the odyssey? nine princes in amber (1997) by roger zelazny daughter of the blood (1998) by anne bishop cassandra clare and her black leather pants draco (c. 2000s?) city of bones (2007) by cassandra clare the clockwork angel (2010) by cassandra clare the hundred thousand kingdoms (2010) by nk jemisin the red pyramid (2010) by rick riordan shadow and bone (2012) by leigh bardugo acotar (2015) by sjm fourth wing (2023) by rebecca yarros the wren in the holly library (2024) by ka linde this monster of mine (2025) by shalini abeysekara
🎀 — actually a golden retriever
if you have a suggestion for the class let me know and i will add it!
please I love this man and his family so much. Let his dozens of adopted children, Alfred, and him just be happy. He can be tall dark and broody when he's facing Darkseid or talking to Hal Jordan
maomiOP
sharky this gif is sending me 🤣🤣 dw i’ll be making a chart that further dives into the complexities of these characters 🫡🫡
I found another one and just had to share🫡
i’m so glad i happened upon you sharing this, you get me 🙂↕️
I LOVE THIS GIF HAHAHAHHAH
it's actually an accurate scene from the animated batman show 😂 The showrunners knew that batman was babygirl
as they should 🙂↕️🙂↕️🙂↕️
what am i doing here
oh hey batman .... uhhhhh I didn't take these photos. Trust. It wasn't me. And I'm not Lego Joker in disguise.
Oh I’m embarrassingly early to this post/list but HELL YEAHHHHHH🤪🖤🦇
maomiOP
LMAO YOU CAUGHT ME SETTING UP THE CLASSROOM 🫣
Just here early to offer help if you need any chairs moved around 👀🪑😈
thank you thank you if you could help set up the back row it would be very much appreciated! this might be a packed classroom
I’m just really excited to learn🤓
What...is a shadow daddy. Specifically, what is meant by "shadow powers"?
— an old
It usually describes the dark, brooding morally complex male love interest with immense power (magical and/or political). (I think they’re pretty often older than the FMC). Of course the character doesn't have to be the love interest and can just be a character in the story. The other traits are more important. And some notable examples have shadow powers, hence the term "shadow daddy". Correct me if I got that wrong, though! :)
Edit: shadow powers are powers that work with shadow. I think most often they’re visualised with dark/black clouds and basically the opposite of powers based on light.
Thanks, this is helpful! Still feel kind of vague on light & shadow powers but the general outline is there...
No problem! I'm personally not really sure what shadow powers are supposed to be. My only encounter with them was in the Shadow and Bone trilogy. I'm sure there are connaisseurs of shadow daddies that can give a proper definition for that ^^
I keep imagining Dr. Facilier from Disney's The Princess and the Frog, lmao
maomiOP
yes!! he was brought up in my original thread today and he's a good example 🙂↕️🙂↕️
but the classification of shadow/light powers is kept pretty broad for the most part when discussing the tropes in general. using the example of shadow and bone, the main character can summon sunlight and the shadow daddy character can summon darkness.
another example is the manipulation of shadows in fourth wing, and the main character gets lightning powers.
so overall there's usually a light vs dark element, and that can be taken in multiple different directions whether it's as enemies, lovers, rivals, etc!
Class is in session and I'm sat 🧎🏻♀️➡️
Really, that list is amazing. (My 52% overlap seems to show kind of a preference here, tbh 😅😂) Thank you so much for this creation hehe. 🫶🥰 For Cassandra Clare, with City of bones (well, the whole Mortal instruments series), you could also add The clockwork angel (2010), which is the first book of her Infernal devices series. 🤔 I would also recommend The wren in the holly library (2024) by K.A. Linde, cause the MMC is definitely a Shadow daddy in all possible senses… 😅
maomiOP
awesome thank you for sharing with the class 🫡🫡
You’ll see, I am a dedicated and voracious student! 😝 Happy to contribute! 🫶
im crying at batman being here 😭😭😭😭😭😂😂😂😂😂
I don't know how I feel about this list, the presence of iwtv took me out 💀
maomiOP
i've heard so many mixed things about iwtv i'm like shit do i read it for science or do i just leave it be? 🫣
I've read all of it and I don't even know how to answer to this. Some of those books are the worse things I've ever read but others have forever changed my brain chemistry but also I've read the first 5 when I was 12? I don't know! It's not good but it is! It's so fucking weird
maomiOP
hmmmm maybe i will treat it like a salt lamp and lick it out of curiosity
Even that wouldn't be enough for the series because the second book is completely different than the first and then the fifth is again tonally different and in some of them Anne rice was catholic and in others she left the church and so sometimes Lestat believes in god while in other he doesn't and there are aliens and oh my god these books are so fucking weird
maomiOP
this is sending me LMAOOOOOOO anne rice put her whole self into these books i see
Once Lestat wants to kiss monkeys for like 3 paragraphs, and then we have an alien humanoid construction that breastfeeds its own amputated hand and grows another being out of that. Depending on how catholic she was lestad did or did not drink Jesus' blood and once he had a whole chapter imagining to meet the pope. In the witches book and then later appearing in the vampires ones we have some freaky elves like creatures that are fucking obsessed with breastfeeding and also reproduce instantly and after birth become humans in like 10 minutes ready to reproduce again creating the weirdest orgy I've ever had the misfortune of reading. Reading those books completely killed my libido for a month in a way that left me shocked. Whole books could be written about how insane these books are
maomiOP
there are so many brand new sentences here 🧍♀️
You can't blame Anne rice of not having a vivid Imagination, never seen stuff like that and hopefully I'll never do that again
lol I just read it- I can be your scientist if you want 😹
maomiOP
this book feels like a rite of passage at this point and i must brave it 🫡🫡
I recommend reading @Farron and @cybersajil's reviews they help contextualize the read! I don't read reviews before a book but i read them after and those are 🤌
crying at the batman inclusion 😭 the illusion shatters as soon as you realize he’s on his 1938920 adopted child and his 7th pathetic situationship
maomiOP
he’s in a special category of daddy (the one where he’s actually a father figure) 🙂↕️🙂↕️🙂↕️
it just so happens that he is a very sexy and emo man as a bonus 💁♀️
Thank you for putting this important historical archive together!! 🦇🖤❤️🔥 I'm curious to know what overlap there would be between Shadow Daddies and Depressive Demon Nightmare Boys (aka DDNB) (aka the opposite of Manic Pixie Dream Girls)? 🧐 it seems like they're similar, but not exactly.
maomiOP
i feel like perhapes the depressive demon nightmare boys have potential to become shadow daddies, that maybe they are just lacking in maturity and age 🤔 i will have to do more research into this, maybe it would be an offshoot of shadow daddies.... i will report back with my findings when they come to me 🫡
Oooh yes I think you're on to something! The shadow boys probably do graduate into shadow daddies 🤓
