one-hopeless-queer

[one-hopeless-queer]

I have reread Six of Crows recently and decided to write down a summary as I was reading (had a hard time keeping up with the changes to the heist plan the first time lol) and I don't want my work to go to waste so I'm just gonna post it to this long-abandoned tumblr account I haven't used for at least a year.

Enjoy - if you need a recap before the second book or just want to remember something from the story.

Disclaimer: there are plenty of summaries online but they simply tell you the plot, and I wanted to take note of how the story was arranged, i.e., where in the book I could find a specific piece of backstory (I also included mentions of some memorable dialogue).

Tbh I don't really explain things that much so yeah, it works more as a recap for someone who has read the book than a summary for someone who hasn't.

parts in green are dedicated to explaining Kaz's scheming

PART I - SHADOW BUSINESS

1. Dregs & Black Tips' meet at the Exchange, Kaz has a plan and everything goes in accordance with it.

~~~THE EXCHANGE MEETING WITH GEELS:

1. Kaz makes the connection between Big Bolliger visiting Cilla's Fry early twice a week (Black Tips' territory?) and the rival gang crawling around Fifth Harbor and intercepting a shipment of jurda.

2. Kaz outbribes neither of the two rooftop guards. He probably makes sure that Jesper and Big B. are situated on his sides accordingly with the guards' placements on the eastern and western sides of the Exchange, so that it is most likely that, upon being called on, the first guard shoots none other than Big B. who is closest to him.

3. Kaz relies on careful planning when dealing with the first guard's presence. He relies on Inej to take out the other one before he gets a chance to take a shot Jesper.

4. Kaz knows about Big Bolliger's betrayal so he knows that Geels, who is searched by him, still has his gun. What if Big B. searched someone else though? I have to assume Kaz had intel on all three Black Tips (and Inej, with her knowledge of the gangs, deduced who Geels was most likely to take with him). Meaning there could be three possible outcomes for this. Three versions of "my Dregs are going to burn your lovely Elise and her geraniums to the ground". All of them would most likely be bluffs, like the one with Elise. Any of the Tips would be too worried for their loved ones/anything else Kaz had learned about them) to risk their lives (their as in their own and their as in their family's/friends'/lovers'). ~ ~ ~

2. Kaz goes for a walk, Inej follows him and shares her doubts. Kaz gets jumped by Van Eck's people and after a conversation about jurda parem and its effects on grisha (altering perception as opposed to just enhancing power like an amplifier) receives a proposition.

3. He talks to Inej, gives her instructions, washes his sweaty armpits in front of her.

4. He goes to White Rose by the harbour to talk with Nina.

5. Kaz, Nina, Inej and Muzzen go to Hellgate to break Matthias out.

They go in wearing Komedie Brute's costumes as part of the similiarly clad crowd gathering weekly to watch prisoners fight wild animals. They wait for Matthias to be done with his fight - he is made to kill three wolves, animals sacred to the drüskelle. Nina drops a nearby guard's pulse, they dress him in Kaz's costume cape to pass him off as a drunk. Kaz himself was wearing a guard's uniform underneath. They go to Matthias' cell and Nina tailors Muzzen to look like a similarly wounded prisoner with a severe case of firepox, so he won't be recognized. He's supposed to be quarantined for a month and then freed after the job is done. (He agreed to do that because the money was good.) Then Jesper lets out the animals used in Hellshow's fights and they escape through a tunnel connected to the arena.

PART II - SERVANT AND LEVER

6. Matthias is brought back to the Crow Club. Kaz makes him an offer - if he helps them, he receives a pardon letter allowing him to rejoin the drüskelle. Wylan sketches out the Ice Court's plan based on his and Matthias' knowledge. They discuss the plans and make arrangements. They're supoosed to leave the next night.

7. Inej is late for the group's rendezvous at the docks. When she arrives, the schooner explodes and around 30 of Black Tips' and Razorgulls' members start firing upon them.

8. Jesper gets shot in the leg, Inej - stabbed in her side. At the last moment, when she's bleeding to death and hiding from her attacker on top of a crate, Kaz shows up and carries her to the schooner.

9. On the schooner, Nina gets to stitching the team's wounds with her Heartrender powers, and Kaz questions Oomen. The interrogation ends with the man losing his eye and, despite Kaz's promise to spare him, being thrown overboard. They learn that the ambush had been orchestrated by Pekka Rollins.

10. We learn a bit of Nina's backstory (her education, being captured by Matthias' drüskelle group -> the storm). Then her and Matthias talk while Nina is watching Inej. Afterwards the team discusses the plan.

PART III - HEARTSICK

11. Inej wakes up, we get some of her backstory intertwined with bits of her conversation with Nina. They sing together.

12. Some time later, Nina allows Inej to leave her room, so she goes on a walk on the deck with Jesper. They talk about Kaz ("we're both the same kind of stupid").

13. After two days since she woke up, Kaz finally makes himself approach Inej with the excuse of talking about the plan (her scaling the incinerator shaft). He admits to having had a brother. We get his backstory up until to him and Jordie getting cheated by "Jakob Hertzoon".

14. The schooner arrives at a shore far north. The group begins a trek south. We get the rest of Nina and Matthias' backstory (storm -> night at the lodge). Then the team sees three pyres along their way, with three charred Grisha bodies. Nina and Matthias fight about it, cruel words are spoken. After that, the two talk more about Fjerda.

15. We get more of Nina and Matthias' backstory (night at the lodge -> Nina falling through the ice). Then both of them talk some more. Matthias gets angry and changes the subject to what Nina had done in Elling. Then the group gets attacked by two Grisha hired/owned(?) by the Shu.

16. Nina insists on burying the dead Grisha (Kaz: "do you want to build them a pyre?") and Matthias volunteers to help her. The rest of the group leaves, with the pair promising to catch up by nightfall. When the two are alone, Nina tells Matthias about why she gave him up to Kerch - about Grisha spies in Elling, how branding Matthias a slaver was the only way to possibly save his life and how later she wanted to recant her charges but was unable to do so.

PART IV - THE TRICK TO FALLING

17. The group arrives in Djerholm and stops in Gestinge [paradise], an inn with a terrace view of the Ice Court. After that, they have a meal at a bakery.

18. Thanks to Nina's intel, they locate a road two miles away where the prison wagon is supposed to pass. Once they're there, they wait while Jesper keeps watch.

Once he signals them, Wylan unroots a tree which falls on the road. While the guards are moving it, the group sneaks to the back of the wagon, removes six prisoners and positions themselves in their place. Kaz faints.

THE INITIAL PLAN:

- Enter as prisoners through the prison sector, leave as guests through the embassy sector.

- Get from one to the other through the only hole leading to the rooftop - the prison incinerator shaft.

- Once they're in the embassy sector - stroll down the glass bridge, get Yul-Bayur, tailor him and leave.

19. The bodies around him remind Kaz of his past (being cheated by Hertzoon -> Kaz arriving back at the docks from the Reaper's Barge). Then, he's brought back to reality by Inej. They pass through all the checkpoints and are led to the holding cells. In the courtyard Nina notices the bodies of Pekka's crew impaled on spikes.

20. During a search the guards find the lockpicks Kaz had hidden in his mouth. After him and the other boys are put in a cell, he dislocates the shoulder of a man who called out "Hey, cripple!" to him.

*Kaz attempted to smuggle in lockpicks precisely so that the guards would find them and bask in their sense of accomplishment - feel like they've neutralized the threat. Which is the reason why Jesper and Matthias didn't get in any trouble - Matthias from being recognized, Jesper from his arms being coated in paraffin so the human amplifier wouldn't recognize him as a Grisha.

21. They're dragged through a walkway from which they can see various feats of Fjerdan engineering kept in a glass enclosure - mainly rifles and tanks, the latter being a something Jesper had apparently had experience with.

22. The boys wait until 6 bells and knock out the other prisoners in the cell with chloro gas. Then, Jesper uses his Fabricator powers to produce two lockpicks from the cell's iron bars. Kaz uses them to open the door. They separate and later meet in the basement.

23. Kaz changes the plan. Matthias and Jesper are left confounded and with nothing to do when they find out that he had gone to search the upper floors with Nina. They also discover that the incinerator shaft is smouldering due to a burning that took place earlier that day.

25. Inej manages to climb the incinerator, although her rubber slippers melt in the heat. We get her backstory (Kaz arriving at the House of Exotics and paying her indenture).

26. Meanwhile, Nina and Kaz get separated because Brekker decides to search the upper cells for Pekka Rollins (more of his backstory: arriving back in Ketterdam from the Reaper's Barge -> joining the Dregs). Nina goes to look for him finds Fabrikator-made holding cells for Grisha prisoners. Later she runs into a few guards and takes them down. An alarm bell sounds - Yellow Protocol, sector disturbance.

PART V - THE ICE DOES NOT FORGIVE

27. At the prison's rooftop, the crew discusses the next steps. Jesper insists on cutting their losses and leaving. Inej sees the Menagerie delegation through the glass dome and proposes she and Nina enter with them and try to get a hold of Yul-Bayur. Kaz reluctantly agrees and orders Jesper and Wylan to break the Drüskelle sector gate (and trigger Black Protocol) at 11 bells so that the majority of the guards who are gathered on the White Island stay there (the glass bridge will be nonoperational). Meanwhile Kaz and Matthias are to make their way to the White Island via a secret passage (the girls might need Kaz "for locks" and so that they don't get stranded there alone if things go south).

28. Nina and Inej enter through the vent. The heartrender drops the Menagerie girls' pulses down and both of them don their appropriate outfits - Nina, of the "Kaelish mare" and Inej - of the "Suli lynx". They lock the girls in the closet. At the checkpoint, Nina is let through (some funny bits here of her flirting with the guard), but Inej is deemed suspicious and led away.

29. Meanwhile, Kaz and Matthias cross over the ice moat on a hidden bridge - right under the thin layer of ice. They crawl to the island, knock two guards out and don their uniforms.

30. Jesper and Wylan arrive at the Gatehouse. They deal with three guards and then, with some difficulty, manage to weaken a link of gate's chain enough for it to snap.

31. At the party, Nina notices Kaz and Matthias in guards' uniforms. Her goal is to find a military official drunk enough to "make some bad decisions", aka share confidential information. She stumbles into Jarl Brum, who she thought drowned with the ship she had been imprisoned on.

32. Inej, still in the line with the "suspicious" guests, realizes she's out of time and shouts at a guard, Nina-style. Heleen notices her, reveals her identity to the guards and mentions Kaz Brekker as well. Inej is dragged away.

33. Jarl Brum and Nina get away from the party. He leads her into the treasury, and when she thinks they're about to "find a quiet corner" (she was planning on torturing him to give her information), he locks her in a cell. Matthias appears and it looks like he has betrayed her.

34. Turns out, Matthias saw Brum following Nina at the party and knew he must have recognized her. So he approached him to "warn his commander of danger".

Then, in the treasury, when they're having a heart-to-heart while Nina's locked in a cell, they embrace and Matthias strangles Brum into unconsciousness.

35. Nina and Matthias use Brum's key to open the lab door and find Kuwei Yul-Bo who says his father, Bo-Yul Bayur, is dead. The boy rigs an explosive in the lab and the three of them leave. Outside, they get surrounded by drüskelle.

36. Kaz, who had been waiting for them in the alcove outside of the treasury, unroots the Sacred Ash and they all jump into the hole beneath it. Turns out, he figured that "Djel's voice" thee drüskelle heard was the sound of running water, a spring running under the Ice Court, flowing into the ice moat. They activate their baleens (breathing devices) and are carried down by the river.

PART 6 - PROPER THIEVES

37. Inej is dragged through the walkway in the prison sector - where Kaz apparently wanted her to be at 11 bells (I don't remember him mentioning that though lol, please correct me if I'm wrong). She lunges at one of the guards. Jesper and Wylan show up and help her deal with the other one.

38. With a winch and Heleen's diamonds Inej had stolen, Wylan produces a drill which they use to cut through Grisha-made glass of the enclosure. Inej leaps through the hole and gets into a tank. She fires it, the boys join her and they escape by charging through the Ice Court's "impenetrable" walls.

39. Kaz, Nina, Matthias & Kuwei are washed up outside of the fortress' walls, by a wide river (the wideness of which (sorry lol I had to say that) made Kaz wonder about the water source and had led him to the conclusion about the underground spring) Matthias and Nina try to save Kaz who is barely breathing. When he wakes up, they climb up the gorge. We learn that stealing a tank was not improvisation and, again, Kaz's planning.

40. The group is reunited by the bridge on a river. They blow up the bridge to stop the Fjerdan reinforcements in pursuit. Then they drive to the harbor.

41. At the harbor they find themselves being aimed at by around 200 soldiers. Nina takes Kuwei's stash of parem and puts them to sleep. When Jarl Brum shows up, she deals with him as well, but heeds Matthias' plea and leaves him alive.

42. On their way back, Nina is asked by Kaz to tailor Wylan to look like Kuwei. Kaz and Inej have a heart-to-heart, if you can call it that ("I will have you without armor").

43. They meet with Jan Van Eck on Velgelluk. He admits that the Merchant Council knows nothing about the deal and negotiates the terms around breaking it. Kaz gets him talking about Wylan, who is with them disguised as Kuwei. Van Eck's Squallers sink the team's schooner, but it's abandoned - Kaz had sent Nina with Wylan away, headed to Hellgate's abandoned underground cages.

44. Eventually, Van Eck gives a signal to attack the team. A squaller flies away with Inej and Kaz is left with guilt at how much more of a "Kaz Rietveld", his former self, he has become.

We learn that the one who unintentionally talked on them to the Dime Lions resulting in an attack where Inej received a gut wound was Jesper.

45. The book ends from Pekka Rollins' (whom Kaz had freed so the man would be indebted to him) perspective, who is offered Kaz's shares at the Crow Club in exchange for 200 000 kruge for Brekker's new scheme. He wants to go to war with Van Eck and "get his money and his girl back".

Sorry if some things felt somewhat "incomplete" - as I said, I was writing it down the way it appeared in the book, not as entire stories, you're supposed to put it together yourself or just refer to the book as needed. Also sorry if my English sounds weird in places lol. Thanks for reading and I hope it helped!

[one-hopeless-queer]

Pathetic Little Gay Cringe Horrible Beast  Daniil Dankovsky Gifboard

[one-hopeless-queer]

i had a patho dream today too but the only thing i remember was the fact that i went to see Big Vlad but instead of russian he was german and when i saw him he was like. flat. completely flat. his model was just flattened. AND he was called Dick Flat(as in how you would read Vlad if it was a german word; dick means fat in german) . BTW i am not german and have stopped learning it around 3years ago. so that was interesting

laughing almost too hard to publish this Dick Flat the two-dimensional boss of the bull enterprise Dick Flat (german). Obsessed truly

[one-hopeless-queer]

shoutout to ppl who r literally incapable of making friends. for whom the internet isn't this big respite from school life where they can finally be themselves and interact with others. who struggle to establish any sort of contact whether it's online or in person. i won't tell you it's gonna get better. but it's good you're still there

[one-hopeless-queer]

-I’m not a fighter.

-You don’t have to be. Look, I’ve got these.

[one-hopeless-queer]

A Classic Meme for @foibles-fables

Talanah: "Ah yes. Me. My girlfriend. And her overly-affectionate overridden Watcher.“

[one-hopeless-queer]

agony and steel

[one-hopeless-queer]

OH MY GOD

My contribution

[one-hopeless-queer]

One of the many persistently interesting things to me about Control is how Jesse and other characters address each other. With everyone she meets, she introduces herself as Jesse (sometimes Jesse Faden) and asks that she be addressed as such. I’ve tried to isolate these moments, as follows: 

With Arish, “My name is Jesse Faden…Let’s skip the formalities, please.”

Arish, who introduces himself with only his title and last name, continues to use ma’am, but actively tries to refer to her just as Faden, especially later in the game. It’s a kind of middle ground, but he’s trying.

With Langston, “I’m Jesse, the new Director.” Every time he uses ma’am, she intentionally does not refer to him as Fred, as he requested, and instead uses his last name. It’s a wonderfully passive-aggressive little thing she does.

With Marshall, “Just call me Jesse.” Marshall continues to refer to her as Director Faden, I believe without fail. This is an interesting detail, because in this conversation, Marshall refers to Trench just as Zachariah, perhaps giving insight into what their relationship was before the events of the game.

Jesse tells Emily to call her Jesse and Emily introduces herself as Emily, with that adorably goofy smile. Emily is the ONLY ONE to refer to Jesse as Jesse AND the only one whom Jesse addresses by first name. After exiting dialogue with her in Central Executive, Emily jests with a “Yes ma’am, Director Faden!” to which Jesse responds with “Please, Emily. Not even as a joke.”

All of this leads me to believe that Jesse is still coming to terms with her new position, and is very uncomfortable with formalities. When someone refers to you as ma’am, out of respect for your rank (as opposed to like customer service or whatever), the rank they are conferring to you is one by which you can give orders, make decisions, and in literal ways, take control of a situation. Perhaps her dismissal of that formality is representative of the subversion of rank as her authority, so she can instead prove that she herself–just Jesse, not her position of Director–has the power and abilities to make things right, regardless of where she is in the hierarchy. 

And yet the persistence of some characters to use ma’am and Director Faden are reminders that her personal power within the FBC only exists because she is the Director–the two are intertwined and inseparable. But she does have Emily, the dear scientist, who seems to see Jesse as just Jesse, listens when she needs a friend to work stuff out with, and asks the personal questions that could lead to further revelations about what’s happening both within and without our dear protagonist.

[Edit: I didn’t include Underhill, Dylan or the Board, for these reasons:

Underhill gives no fucks, responds with “I’m sure you are,” to Jesse introducing herself, and avoids actually addressing her with a name or title

Dylan is a complicated case and is not in the same NPC category as everyone else

The Board does not adhere to normal human language conventions, though I do love how they communicate]

[one-hopeless-queer]

the second photo is literally andrey stamatin's stairway to heaven

“Intrinsic Journey” by Dmitry Lookianov

[one-hopeless-queer]

Details of Untitled (2019)

instagram: @suhaylah.h shop: suhaylah.bigcartel.com

[one-hopeless-queer]

i don't know how to explain it but rolli gives me gender envy

i want his energy now

[one-hopeless-queer]

disappearing from tumblr for three to seven business days just to reblog something akin to this every time i come back

No cap that rolli und rita fanart from forever ago was........not good. Here is a redraw

[one-hopeless-queer]

Photo by Sam San Roman

[one-hopeless-queer]

Blackout #7: der Bierpinsel in Steglitz, Berlin 2021

[one-hopeless-queer]

Sportacus and Robbie Rotten from LazyTown are going to super hell for gay crimes!!!

requested by: @megatorchicchic

[one-hopeless-queer]

everyone: sangwoo fucking sucks, his debts were his own fault because he was a greedy little bitch, he betrayed ali who was a sweetheart, he killed saebyeok when she was dying already

lizard brain: he hot tho

I have a very normal, very bisexual amount of feelings about this photo