kanejbr3kker - Tumblr blog

[kanejbr3kker]

i always think the us editions of s&b and soc are really pretty but then i remember that the french editions exist

[kanejbr3kker]

kaz thinks he's so subtle about inej, like sir no you are not

[kanejbr3kker]

aww i wish

in another universe, colm fahey is sitting down for a lovely meal with his son and smiling as he listens to jesper talk about his friends.

the ghafas are grounding inej for sneaking off at night to spend time with her boyfriend

wylan has a flute recital on the weekend that kaz pretends he won’t go to (no one is fooled)

nina and matthias go on dates to the ice cream shop, and matthias always lets nina eat most of his ice cream

the crows are safe, and instead of being criminals, they are simply a group of trouble-making, angsty teenagers. they are children who were allowed to be children. they get the childhoods they deserve.

[kanejbr3kker]

headcanon that genya tailors alina to have wrinkles so no one at karamzin questions the white hair

[kanejbr3kker]

i keep seeing memes that are like "kaz is the sort of person to tell kids santa isn't real" and "kaz would enjoy watching a child cry" and i'm sorry but anyone who says that clearly doesn't know kaz. like yes he does a lot of stuff out of spite but he's never an asshole for the sake of being an asshole and especially not to kids. every single thing that he does is for a reason and he wouldn't be mean to kids just cause he could and i probably sound like inej but i love kaz because of how nuanced his character is and because he only does terrible things because he has to and i will stand by the fact that he is not a bad person for the rest of my life sooo

[kanejbr3kker]

FOR REAL!!! Kaz is my favorite Grishaverse character and yk it's partially cause he's funnt and hot and morally grey but it's mostly cause of how hard he tries to become a better person for Inej, like they deserve each other more than any book couple ever

Okay, so... as a collective fandom, we can agree that bullying Kaz is fun, yeah? There's just something about seeing the guy down at his lowest and then prodding him with a stick and going "Come on, do something."

But I'm going to stand in his corner for a bit in this post.

Something that never really sat right with me is the collective implication that Kaz isn't good enough for Inej (and never will be).

I'm totally with you: he didn't deserve Inej in the first book and maybe not even yet in the second because he didn't give her anything to work with. He didn't even visit her after she was stabbed, or show her how relieved he was when she recovered. And this is just the thing: he didn't deserve her because of his BEHAVIOUR.

But I've read so many post-CK fanfictions where Kaz has been working on himself, is openly communicating with her, basically kisses the ground she walks on, treats her as his equal and goes above and beyond to make her as comfortable as possible, and still everyone INCLUDING Inej (and Kaz) goes "I/she deserve/s so much better than me/him". And THAT implicates that Kaz wasn't good enough for her just because of his behaviour, but because he as a whole human being is just less valuable than her, and that viewpoint has always made me super uncomfortable, especially considering his trauma.

Now I know what you're going to say, and I absolutely agree: trauma never excuses abhorrent behaviour. But there's just something icky to me about looking at a traumatized person who has not only been making an EXTREME effort to overcome their issues, but also shown amazing results, and going "They don't deserve X", "They're less than X", etc. It gives "Traumatized people are damaged goods"-vibes, which is especially weird considering my next point: INEJ IS TRAUMATIZED TOO AND HER TRAUMA GETS IN THE WAY OF A GOOD AND LOVING RELATIONSHIP JUST AS MUCH AS HIS.

She literally admits to herself that she wears as much armor as Kaz does and was being kind of hypocritical when she told him to remove his. Inej is a flawed character (which somehow seems to be a controversial take in the fandom), and to put her on a pedestal because of how virtuous and "better" she is than Kaz takes all the nuance out of her. There are definitely some parts in the books where I felt like she was in the wrong or toeing the line, but the others never really call out her behaviour the way they do with Kaz, not even in their internal monologue, so we're left with this image of an Inej who can do no wrong and a Kaz who simply got lucky.

The fact that in aforementioned fanfictions (that I still absolutely adore btw) Inej too thinks he isn't good enough for her despite everything he does for her and for himself, and despite how far he's come also turns her acknowledgment of her own self worth into something ugly and vain in my eyes. She loves herself, but she also loves Kaz, so I don't think she, or any good partner, would look at her boyfriend who clearly already thinks very little of himself and go "Yep, this fucker isn't good enough".

So often people will look at a healthy happy couple and go "He/she could do so much better than her/him". Like that's a whole person you're putting in a competition of "Who's more worthy?" as if they were some object that is of better or worse quality.

I don't think I articulated this too well and there's a lot more to be said about this, but I hope you understand the gist of it. Post CK-Kaz who works on himself and openly communicates ABSOLUTELY deserves Inej, and I will ROT on this hill.

Now I've been nice to him for long enough I think *whacks him with a crow bar*

[kanejbr3kker]

considering leigh based the darkling on her abusive ex boyfriend you'd think she'd want to actually kill him off at some point.

[kanejbr3kker]

imagine how much you could get done with kaz brekker's sleep schedule.

[kanejbr3kker]

so last night i was thinking about that line where matthias (i think it was him? probably) tells kaz he has nothing holy in his life and kaz is just like "no you're wrong" and we all know he's thinking about inej.

and then there's that scene in the show right before they kidnap alina where kaz is in the church and that guard guy is trying to kill him and then inej matieralizes on the balcony above him so she can save his life and they're in a literal church and she's appearing above him to rescue him, basically just being the "something holy" in his life.

[kanejbr3kker]

don't get me wrong i love gaslighting myself into thinking knowing that crooked kingdom is only 38 chapters long, but at the same time it makes me really sad because then there's no chapter 44.

[kanejbr3kker]

Thinking about how Jesper gave a presentation on Zemeni oil futures that one time like. What was he wearing? Did he have to dress in mercher blacks to seem more "professional"? He'd probably have hated that. Did he have to put his revolvers away? How did he disguise his features because he was still a wanted man in Ketterdam at the time. Did he practice what he was going to say? Was any of it actual information or was he just bullshitting the entire time? Was he doing it alone or was there anyone else there with him? How did the conversation go down where Kaz told him that he would be doing this? Radmakker called it "strange" so I can only imagine what possible chaos went down. I have so many questions!!

[kanejbr3kker]

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.

[kanejbr3kker]

help my friend's friend is reading soc right now and apparently she "doesn't get the point of kanej"

i don't even know her and i feel betrayed

[kanejbr3kker]

anytime i recommend s&b to a friend and they actually agree to read it there's this moment of genuine fear that they're gonna be a darklina shipper.

[kanejbr3kker]

crooked kingdom has really made me rethink my love of short chapters.

[kanejbr3kker]

"Because I am greedy for the sight of you. Because the prospect of facing this war, this loss without you fills me with fear. Because I find I don't want to fight for a future if I can't find a way to make a future with you."

Zoyalai, aka why I'm aro

[kanejbr3kker]

kanej is always either a married couple or the world's most awkward teenagers