crows-and-gray-morality - Tumblr blog

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V.E Schwab writes such dynamic and complex characters that are so unforgettable. Like they have so much range and spice to them,, they're just *chef's kiss*

I often find myself thinking about the gay little family in Vicious and the nerdy little romantics in Addie Larue and the bisexual Slytherpuffs in Shades of Magic. I wish I could give Kell, Lila, Addie, Henry, Victor, Syd, Mitch, Eli and Rhy a little forehead kiss and protect them.

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Too lazy to write up coherent thoughts on all the VE Schwab books I’ve read, so accept this for now

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„Coming out“ by Victoria Elizabeth Schwab

You are in a room and it is dark. There are no windows and no doors, the bed is too soft—or too firm—and the books aren’t your taste, and the clothes in the closet have never really fit, and it’s a little hard to breathe in here, but it’s your room. It has always been your room. So you stay put.

You are 16 when you fall in love with your best friend—only you don’t understand the “in” part yet, so you just call it love. Teenage girls are always loving their friends, becoming entangled, like trees grown together, so you think that’s what it is. You call it friendship when you lean your head on her shoulder between classes. You call it friendship when she draws tiny notes in the plaid margins of your uniform skirt. You call it friendship when she throws her arms around your shoulders and everything in you settles like silt. You take a boy to prom, and his hand feels like a wet fish in yours, his breath on your cheek like stale steam. You don’t have a brother but if you did, kissing him would feel like this. A skin-squirming discomfort.

One day, you realize your room has a door. You don’t know why you’ve never noticed it before. Perhaps it wasn’t there, but now it is. You don’t know where it leads, except that it leads out, which is a scary word, so you sit on the bed, and stare at the handle. You don’t open it.

You are 17, and the girls around you are all boy crazy and you wonder if something inside you is broken, or missing, or if your body is simply ignorant, unpracticed. You struggle with an eating disorder, and maybe your discomfort in your skin has spilled over, made your body an enemy. Maybe it is fighting back. You decide it is just your nerves, your neuroses, your mind getting in your way. It shouts “wrong wrong wrong,: and you put your thoughts on mute. You can’t stand the room anymore. You open the door, and step out into the space beyond.

And instantly, you feel better. There is room out here, to stretch, to move. There is even a lamp, casting a dim glow, and your eyes begin to adjust...but as they do, you realize, this isn’t a room, it’s just a hall, a space between here and there. You have decided where you don’t belong, but you still have to find where you do.

You are 19, home for winter break and the girl you love is there, too. You fling yourself into each other’s arms, and it feels like coming home. For one incredible moment, the world makes sense. She tells you about the fraternities and sororities, and about the boy she’s dating, and you try to smile, because she seems happy. Over break you go out with a boy—no, not a boy, a man, even though you still feel like a girl (the word woman scrapes like stubble against your skin). He is handsome, and clever, and when he starts to climb on top of you, your stomach turns. And you know if someone took a picture, you would look right, tangled together like this, your hand on his skin and his hand under your shirt...but it doesn’t feel right. You feel like the person behind the camera instead of the one in the bed. How can a man’s body be so beautiful, up until the moment it touches you?

You cannot stay in the hall, so you keep walking, into another room. And this one, this one is nice. It’s open and well-lit and you think, ah, there we are. This feels better, so you settle in. You put up the curtains you saw in someone else’s house, tell yourself they fit yours, too. You hang pictures that other people like, you do everything you can to make the space look right. You remind yourself it’s so much better than the room where you started. You try to make yourself comfortable, and for a little while you’re convinced you don’t have to keep going. This is far enough. The break ends and the girl goes back to school, and so do you, but you don’t know what to do. You aren’t gay—as far as you know at this point, gay is only one of two things, butch or lipstick, and neither of those fit, and you like boys...or at least the idea of them. But you have never been in love with anyone other than your high school friend, so finally, you decide to call and tell her how you feel, to find the words and hope it will not ruin what you have. It takes months, but you are finally ready to pick up the phone, but she calls first, and you hold your breath and hope—but she’s calling to say that she’s engaged, which feels like the bad plot of a soap opera, except when it’s happening to you. She asks how you are, and you say fine, the truth crawling back inside your throat as you tell yourself she was an exception, not the rule. You will keep trying to find someone who makes you feel how other people look when they’re together.

This room isn’t right. You thought you could make it work, but you can’t stand the pictures and the color isn’t right, and you’re not sure when the room began to feel so small and stuffy, but it does, and you can hear voices, coming from somewhere else. You didn’t realize there were other people in the house, but the sound of them talking, laughing, fills you with hope. You go to look for them. You are 21, watching your best college friends—both girls—fall in love. For two years, the three of you have been inseparable, but for the last few months, they have been pulling away from you and toward each other, and when they finally confess that they’ve been dating, it’s in the same breath they say “There is no room for you in this anymore.” They have carved you out of their story, translated friendship into romance in a way you could not. And they are so sure of themselves, so at home in their skin, and you are so confused, you convince yourself that what you felt for them was not love, though it clearly was. You feel lost. You feel alone. You find room after room that isn’t yours (you had no idea the house was so big). Everywhere you look, you find open doors, and people ready to welcome you. Some rooms are vast and brightly lit, and others cozy, and everyone you pass seems so happy in their home, and you want to feel the way they do, but you know that none of these rooms are made for you. You have gotten very good at knowing what and who you aren’t, an image made up of negative space.

You are 24 and you know you aren’t straight. When your parents ask when you’ll bring home a guy, you softly amend that it might be a girl. They ask if you are bisexual, and you say yes, and their takeaway is that there is still hope. To them, it is 50/50, a roll of the dice. They love you so much that they want your life to be easy, and easy means normal, and so they hold their breath and hope you fall for a guy—and you hold your breath and hope you do, too. You don’t.

You slump onto the stairs, tired of searching this house for somewhere that feels like home. A stranger passes and offers to help you up. They can’t show you the right room, but the gesture makes you feel a little less alone. You are 27 when you learn the difference between aesthetic and romantic and/or sexual attraction, when someone explains that you can love the way a person looks, you can be drawn to their mind and admire their body and still not want to sleep with them. It is shocking, to have the words. So far you have only been able to point out what feels wrong. But this, this one detail feels right. The relief you feel is like a window thrown open. But the breeze carries with it a current of dread. You realize you will never bring home a man.

You begin to date girls, and it feels like you are starting over, like you are 16 again, your best friend’s head lolling on your shoulder, the scent of her shampoo tickling your nerves. You feel the flutter, the panic—but this time, when you kiss them goodnight, there is no wall, no recoil. This time, when their hand slides along your skin, you don’t feel sick. This time, it is right, it is spoons, it is edges fitting, it is mornings beneath warm blankets, and for the first time you understand what people mean when they talk of longing. You have found the right room, you think. It took so much searching, and you’re pretty sure you passed this door a dozen times, but it hangs open now, ready to welcome you, and you step through, ready to be home. It is a beautiful room, full of kindness and warmth, and you finally sink into a chair beside the window—and smile.

You are 29, a bestselling author with a major platform, when you announce that you are gay. You did not want to, really, but you have begun to write queer characters, and people have begun to wonder if it’s your place, and so you claim it. You announce yourself. It feels…uneventful.

The backlash is minimal. The support is loud. Every few months, it seems, you have to mention it again. You wonder if you are not gay enough, because people always seem surprised, even though, looking back at your work, it has always been there, the versions of you that did not fit, that were not home inside their skin. Every single story with an outsider at its center, a person at odds with their world, who decides to escape, to change, sometimes themselves, sometimes everything else. You no longer need to hide your heroes.

Your characters begin to live the way you do, unrepentant. Never reduced to their queerness, only expanded by it. It infuses them in many ways, sometimes subtle, others loud. They take up space in the world, space they deserve. And you? You feel better than you have felt in years. You are not hiding anymore. You feel right. And proud. And yet. The window. You are sitting in the room beside the window when you look out, and see the garden. You never realized that there was a place beyond the house. You tell yourself to stay put, that it’s not worth it, that where you are is good enough, but that old discomfort rises up, a restless whisper in the back of your mind. You have spent so many years watching others be happy, at home, and the truth is, you have never felt as sure. Now, the sight of that window, that garden, makes your heart race. You rise, and slide open the window, and climb out.

Your feet hit the grass, and the breeze rushes through, and it is the best feeling in the world, and you realize, this is what they all felt, the people in the house, this is what they all found.

You look back at the house, with all its rooms, and you are so grateful for the people in them, and so glad you listened to your heart when it told your tired legs to keep going.

You are 33, and you are standing in the garden of the house. It wasn’t the rooms that were wrong. It was the house itself. You didn’t need walls—you needed space. Out here, there are no rooms, no roof. There are no walls, no doors, just open ground, a sprawling night filled with radiant riotous blooms.

There are people out here in the garden, and they welcome you without asking where you’ve been, and you say you’re sorry you’re late, you got lost, and they fold you into their arms and says it is okay, you are here now.

You are home.

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Kaz‘ Life in Emojis (before the six of crows‘ plot line)

🌾🚜 👩🏻‍🌾👨🏻‍🌾 👶🏻 👦🏻 🔜 🌾🚜 🪦🪦👦🏻🧑🏻‍🦱 🔜 💵 👦🏻🧑🏻‍🦱 🚃🧳🧳🏙 🔜 🌆🏨 👦🏻🧑🏻‍🦱🧮💭💵🤑💰 🔜 🧔‍♂️🤥 💸 🔜 🚫💵🤒🤒 🔜 🏙 👦🏻🪦😭 🔜 🏚 💔🧑🏻‍🦱👊🔫🔪 🗝 🔜 🏦🔫🤕🧑🏻‍🦯 🔜 🌆 🏚🧑🏻‍🦱👔 🎲 🎰💵⚓️💵 🔜 🧑🏻‍🦱💭🤴🏻🔪🧔‍♂️☠️

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What’s your favorite Taylor Swift album?

Debut stans - look howdy on the outside but are intellectuals on the inside

Fearless stans - Look fearless on the outside but are sensitive on the inside

Speak now stans - look like a princess on the outside but they are rage and revenge on the inside.

Red stans - look heartbroken on the outside but are strong than they thought.

1989 stans - look happy and free on the outside but are confused and lonely on the inside.

Reputation stans look tough on the outside but are rainbow glittery on the inside.

Lover stans - look rainbow glittery on the outside but they fight for justice and scream misogynists/ racists/ homophobes in the face.

Folklore stans - seem to be the cool popular kids but feel like they don’t belong.

Evermore stans - good thing they look perfectly normal on the outside but they are crazy sociopaths on the inside. (And their daddy made them get a boating license when they were 15)

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Let me tell you why you will never see your own beauty like you see other peoples beauty.

We don’t experience ourselves like others do. We just see a snapshot of ourselves … in photos or while we look in the mirror.

You don’t experience the way your smile forms.

You can’t see the pain in your eyes when you are really touched by something.

You don’t feel the energy in the room when you talk about something you’re really passionate about.

When you whisper into someone’s ear, you hear your words but they feel your breath tickle their skin.

You aren’t touched by your own kindness

You aren’t impressed by your witty remarks.

We treat ourselves like those pictures with hidden mistakes. We look for those flaws in ourself but we miss the complete artwork. you might think your tummy isn’t flat enough or your nose is too big but You are a person with a million little aspects you will never be able to capture. You are a Gesamtkunstwerk.

(Besides the book characters we love the most are the flawed ones, right?)

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Life lessons I learned from six of crows and crooked kingdom

1. Always wake people up before you murder them.

2. Don’t kill your nemesis destroy them so they wished they were dead.

3. Be organized and plan your crimes day.

4. Friendship!

5. If you love a girl call her an investment and buy her a ship.

6. If you ever try to touch hot Lieutenants you gonna lose a hand.

7. Don’t lick Wyvil!

8. Seriously don’t lick any bugs. At all!

9. the best way to steal a man’s wallet is to make him believe that you want to steal his watch (or whatsoever)

10. Crows are the best animals.

11. Lions suck.

12. Fuck Pekka Rollins.

13. Go team!

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Okay. Here comes a quite dark post

(trigger warning: rape, abuse)

Look. Kaz can’t stand to be touched or to touch others BUT he can if it’s violence related. He pushes Wylan against the wall and gets really close to his face while threatening him. He beats people up. He had a brawl with Jesper when they for sure had a lot of physical contact with each other. He holds Jan van Eck at knife point etc etc etc.

So he probably could have gone down a very different road when it comes to sleeping with people.

Maybe, probably, he could have sex if it was just violent enough. If it was something he would do to them and not something they would do together. If it was a violent act and if he would hurt them and beat them.

He never did. Just saying.

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I just read Vicious by Victoria Schwab and I can not-so-proudly declare that I fell in love with another morally questionable character … that is Victor Vale.

(I know he’s more than morally questionable. I still love him. He is not entirely bad. Okay?)

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Addie LaRue said she wants to be a tree, figuratively, and Luc said he is the roots beneath the earth.

Addie LaRue said she had her own constellation of stars and Luc said he is the darkness between the stars.

So excuse me when I think they’ll end up together sooner or later.

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Kaz just loves to disagree.

Kaz Brekker defending himself in the beginning of Six of Crows.

JvE; „You’re a blackmailer—” KB: “I am a broker information.” JvE: “A con artist—”. KB: “I create opportunity.” JvE: “A bawd and a murderer—”. KB: “I don’t run whores, and I kill for a cause.”

Kaz later in the books

I am a monster. The worst man in Ketterdam. There is no trace of decency in me. I am pure evil.

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Six of crows/ crooked kingdom inspired tattoos

Quote: We are all somebody monster. (Nina and Matthias)

A six on the biceps (like Kaz‘ R)

Quote: The heart is an arrow (and an arrow)

The Dregs cup and crow tattoo

A human heart (Nina)

Two revolvers (Jesper)

A dagger/knife (Inej)

Playing cards

A wolf (Matthias)

A ghost (Inej)

A heart wrapped with barbed wire

Kaz cane

Quote: Fear is a Phoenix (and a Phoenix)

Six crows sitting on a roof or telephone wires.

Quote: No mourners. No funerals.

Oxytocin chemical formula: C43H66N12O12S2 (Wylan)

Wild geraniums and a knife (Inej)

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Okay, guys, I’ve decided to found a gang.

We are the Beautiful Ghosts.

No, you don’t have to be pretty to join.

Join if …

… you are more song lyrics and book quotes than an actual person.

… and 90% of your personality is stolen from book or TV show characters.

… you feel alone and misunderstood.

… all you ever wanted was to be wanted.

… you are a kind and soft person but you have (darkish) gray morals.

… you have to make up fake scenarios in your head to get through the day.

… you hear this voice in your head that screams that everyone hates you and you’ll never be good enough.

You are not alone! We need you now! Let’s unite!

Write your name or however you want to be called in the comments if you want to join and reblog.

If you don’t want to join please reblog as well so that we can find our lost brothers, sisters and non-binary siblings around the globe.

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The Crows usually criticize Kaz’ “cruelty”, brutality and vengefulness but here are the moments Inej and Wylan understood.

Wylan

"Well, how about this? Kaz is going to tear your father's damn life apart."

Wylan was about to say that didn't help either, but he hesitated. Kaz Brekker was the most brutal, vengeful creature Wylan had ever encountered--and he'd sworn he was going to destroy Jan Van Eck. The thought felt like cool water cascading over the hot, shameful feeling of helplessness he'd been carrying with him for so long. Nothing could make this right, ever. But Kaz could make his father's life very wrong.

Inej

Inej was moving before she thought of it. She couldn’t just watch him die. Her knives were in her hands. She’d kill them all. She’d pile the bodies to the rafters for the Stadtwatch to find.

Did you wonder what made Kaz like that? Helplessness.

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“My child is completely fine!”

“Your child is obsessed with books about traumatized kids who became thieves and murderers because she can relate to them more than every other real person she’s ever met and she strongly needs a sense of belonging!”

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My favorite book tropes

- totally unrelated to a specific book -

Investment to lover

The - stab her and I’ll rip your eye out and toss you in the ocean- trope

When character A buys character B a ship and finds ones family after they have been separated because character B was sex trafficked

Drüskelle/Drüsje to lovers

When they say that they like each other’s stupid face 🥺

When 2 people are incapable of touching each other due to severe trauma but they try to make it work

When he fights half a gang on a staircase and then becomes their leader

When she threatens to kill each and every one if they murder him and pile up their bodies.

The very famous “just girls?”-trope

And my favorite the - I’m not gonna spend my whole life trying to fix him and let his darkness consume me but I make him work on himself to overcome his trauma bit by bit while I’ll go after my own dreams and goals - trope