#Crooked kingdom

[life-o-n-m4rs]

Wylan!!!

[lunarthecorvus]

I will never stop with the Nina and Kaz haircut jokes

[doorlene]

jesper: you bought a waffle?

nina: yes

jesper: from the same truck that hit kaz?

nina, taking a bite of her waffle: yes

[petratherrock]

I suddenly just want a SoC au where Kaz bakes. Everything else is the same but he bakes and everyone knows it. Inej knows it. Jesper too. Even Pekka Rollins does.

Wylan arrives and is expecting Brekker's infamous butter salted pretzel but he doesn't get it until he finds it in his satchel after he meets his mum with Jesper. He didn't know if he was grateful or wanted to throw it at Kaz's head

Inej constantly finds doughnuts and scones in her pockets. One time she's starving and cold on a roof somewhere in Ketterdam on a job for Kaz and she's looking for a little carving knife to fidget with and she finds three little pretzels in a paperbag in her pocket.

Matthias finds a plate with a muffin on it with the icing shaped like a red bird in his cell the day they broke him out. At one point in Crooked Kingdom he had a craving for Dirtyhand's salted caramel cookies and he wanted to exorcise himself

Inej's parents love his baked goods since the first time he baked them an entire lemon coconut almond moist cake. He presented Zoya with pineapple pie when they went to meet Sturmhond.

Nikolai finds a venison pie shaped like a steam ship in his office after his and Jesper's visit

Nina is banned from his kitchen.

[certainly-base-whether]

https://elizabeth-854.suduso.com.cn/uj/rV8Gmse

[dwyntwo]

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, not because he's inherently less important or less valuable or less of a person than her.

However 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 the reason Kaz wasn't good enough for her was not his behaviour towards her, but the fact that he as a whole human being is just "not enough" and "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. just because they haven't fully healed yet or might never fully heal. 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*

[yourself-tough]

https://allison-543.szhdyy.com.cn/du/Oc3tQiZ

https://allison-543.szhdyy.com.cn/du/Oc3tQiZ

[jazzkrebber]

Kaz Brekker may not have needed a reason, but he always had one. it was always Inej

[dorcasmeadoweswife]

when you’re a happy and lovely kid that lost both parents but it’s ok because you still have your older sibling that means the world to you, just to lose them too and instead of going to therapy you change names and become one of the most feared criminals of your city, considered cruel and insane by others (while having some of the worst flashbacks ever

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Do you ever think about the like ... intimacy implications(?) of Inej wearing Kaz's gloves to climb the incinerator? Like she gets inside of a part of him, a part no one else has seen. She understands him better because of it, sees just how the gloves are made. She can't touch him but touches the thing that's closest and most intimate to him. She finds what keeps him sane and returns it to him. It's nearly erotic without being sexual, don't you think?

Hello and welcome to episode 4 of DK Finally Gets It Together And Answers Her Asks Because It's About Damn Time (the title's growing on me)

Ep One - Ep Two - Ep Three

As always sorry for how long it had taken me to get to this ask but thank you very much for sending it, let's talk!

YES

Y E S

Y E S

I in fact think about this an awful lot. For me, there are two specific details about Inej putting Kaz's gloves on that feel very intimate and the first is her own hesitance to do so. She talks about how she knows that Kaz would tell her to just get on with it but that she feels as though she's violating his privacy by taking them - I don't have my book on me but I'm pretty sure she says it feels like going into his rooms and rifling through his belongings without permission. The second thing that feels incredibly intimate to me when I read this scene is that when Inej notices that the gloves are unlined and have thin slashes in the fingertips she realises that this is so he can maintain contact with cards or coins or so on when pickpocketing and performing slight of hand and she describes it as "touch without touch". TOUCH WITHOUT TOUCH.

INEJ WEARING KAZ'S GLOVES IS TOUCH WITHOUT TOUCH. THEY ARE SO CLOSE AND YET THEY ARE SO FAR AWAY FROM EACH OTHER and I'm pretty sure that it's after this scene once they're on the roof together that Inej says it's the first time they've touched skin on skin (though please correct me if I'm wrong) so this is the closest they've ever got to touching before!!!!!!!!!!

I may simply melt into a puddle thinking about them

[yeehawesome]

let me say it again: Nina Zenik is not skinny. She is fat. She is hot. Those two things are not mutually exclusive, so why am I still seeing fanart where she’s thin?????

[life-o-n-m4rs]

PLEAASSEE I NEED GRISHAVERSE MUTUALS RN PLEEAASSEE IM HYPERFIXATING ON SIX OF CROWS SO BAADDD

[lunarthecorvus]

Dude, poor Wylan was having one hell of a day when they appeared

[jayb1rb]

PART TWO of new incorrect quotes format! This time, not from Six of Crows, but from its sequel Crooked Kingdom!

Format:

Character 1: Do you know what Character 2's problem is?

Character 3: No honor?

Character 4: Rotten parenting skills?

Character 5: Receding hairline?

[chasing-the-storm]

FREDDY CARTER as KAZ BREKKER Shadow and Bone (2023) 2.03

[kanejbr3kker]

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