#Appearances/mentions of Grisha trilogy characters

[writingwithcolor]

Dark features/people as blessed, white and light people as sick

ladyoftheseastuff asked:

I'm writing a fantasy story where the world is permanently covered in snow & ice. The people share a common culture & are loyal to their city states, but they are not homogeneous in appearance; there will be many, many characters coded as PoC. The main religion centers on the sun, & those with dark features are 'favoured' by the sun god, while pale people or anyone who has white/blonde hair are thought vulnerable to "snow sickness", a disease caused by environmental factors (1/2) & have other rules and customs to gain religious approval. It's dangerous & infectious but not well understood. It affects social standing and opportunities, but it's meant to be tied with ideas of youth, vitality, & fear of aging & sickness: it's not limited to those coded as white. This is a cultural detail and not part of the main conflict, but I want to avoid unintentional allegories/parallels & fetishization. Is this a concept that's too close to crossing any of those lines? (2/2)

This feels less like a means to show dark skinned people in an empowering light and more like a weak attempt at subversion. My primary concern (which you have not specified) is how do the "blessed" class treat the "sickly" so to speak. We have fantasy stories like The Grisha Trilogy and Girls of Paper and Fire, which deal with magical ability/feature-based segregation and conflict.

In both cases there is a sense of entitlement which comes with hailing from the "favoured" class, quite obvious, since there will always be an inherent othering metaphor whenever you create such a division, whether it was meant to be a source of conflict or not.

However, the two mentioned series use the "magical people are blessed, non magical people are to be pitied" arc which is somewhat more subtle than divisions created just on the basis of skin colour.

Disclaimer as I do not have albinism or vitiligo: The latter can be extremely harmful, and not just in a racial context, but in cases of albinism, vitiligo etc.

~Mod Mimi

The pitfalls of subversions

While it is always lovely to see dark features considered in a favorable way, there are some issues you may come across. Such a story could easily end up dressing those you wished to uphold as bad guys in the readers' eyes, even if the story's society and the sun god etc. thinks they're amazing, and white and light people as the victims of dark people, deserving reader sympathy. This may especially be the case based on how these groups get treated in the story.

These sort of subversions lean dangerously into "reverse discrimination" plots which are not overall accurate or favorable allegories for your real, human audience. There being diversity on both sides doesn't necessary fix this issue or remove racial or ethnic implications. On that note, and as Mimi mentioned, being demonized and ostracized particularly for skin and genetic disorders like albinism is already a thing. What does your concept say of them?

I think Dark/Black as good and Light/white as bad is a doable concept. Your concept differs a bit from simply subverting black/white tropes. This is not just Black good guys and night skies being peaceful or neutral. It's not just white/light villains (as opposed to victims) or snow symbolling death or sickness.

White and light people are quite blatantly being declared as sick and unfavored and they may very well be victims in the reader's eye with the dark people being the villainous, unsympathetic bunch. Is this your intention?

More to consider

Such a concept requires thoughtful, careful planning and intentional writing. You should have an understanding of what your story implies to the readers and the real-life takeaways.

I think it's possible to make dark skin the favored skin of the sun god without it meaning white/light people stand in a negative light and are sick or unworthy.

Consider what it is that you like about the concept of your story. Can you keep the essence of whatever it is that excites you about your ideas, without denying a whole group of people favor? If not, how will you go about telling such a tale that is not meant to symbolize a sort of reversal of roles discrimination?

Why does the sun god get to determine what is good?

Are there other gods that might have different strong opinions? Perhaps who is favored varies by time of day, season, region, culture, god?

Can dark skin get its favor without white and light features being deemed unfavorable as a whole?

How big of a deal does this favor have to be? I advise reconsidering it being the point of discrimination to white/light people for all the reasons already described.

No matter the directions you go, please research and get the appropriate beta-readers for feedback on the in-depth concepts and story.

~Mod Colette

[aleksanderscult]

Today I will rant about Malina

Because this ship tried to be passed on as an ideal relationship to have.

*spoiler: it wasn't*

Malina is a ship that was shoved down our throats throughout the trilogy. Whether you shipped it or not you were bound to read about it in literally every other page.

And what are the negative aspects of this ship?

Literally EVERYTHING.

Let's start with Mal. The number 1 asshole in this trilogy.

And yes he is the number 1 and not Aleksander since Aleksander was a character with a goal. He had a grand plan that exceeded selfishness and pure evil and he used any means necessary to fulfill it. But Mal? Remind me, what was his plan?

Well, at the start of the trilogy to fuck around girls and then, when Alina began to feel something for someone else, to undermine her, latch on her and chastise her. There you have his role.

The minute Alina started having a life of her own outside his influence, the little jerk felt overlooked and his pride got hurt.

It's evident that Alina felt quite unseen from Mal in the beginning. He flirted and fucked girls right in front of her face (since she very clearly knew) and he even stopped hanging around with her as much as he did in the past.

Quite a start.

And then when Alina found her strength, happiness and place in the Little Palace he got offended. Why isn't she tortured as the rumors had said? What are these clothes that she's wearing? Why is she happy? And, most importantly, WHY IS SHE HAPPY WITH ANOTHER MAN??

Alina at that moment felt like she was walking on eggshells around him. She didn't know what to say without provoking him further. And when she found her voice, the little prick got all puffed up and left without even apologizing for ruining her nice evening.

Then we have Mal not talking to her as if it wasn't his own decision to abandon the army and follow her and again made her feel bad for even mentioning the Darkling.

It appears that Mal had no problem when his best friend bullied Alina but went actual feral when a (powerful) guy showed interest in her. Insecure, aren't we Mal?

In the following books we have Mal being okay that Alina doesn't use her powers and therefore being weak.

We have Mal being more concerned if Alina fucked the Darkling than being tortured by him. Apparently he wanted her virginity for him, I don't know.

We have Mal acting like crazy because Alina decided to return to Ravka to lead the remaining Grisha. But what about him?? What about his needs?? And what if he decides not to follow her? What will she do then?

(people call the Darkling manipulative but let me show you another person that you overlook as manipulative, my friends)

He gets angry when she hesitates to kiss him and again makes her feel bad about it. And how does he respond with that?

Revenge!!✨✨

Kisses Zoya, a woman he fucked before, and then threw the blame to Alina ("at least she doesn't flinch when I kiss her" "why do you care? You don't care about me anyway") Gaslighting at its finest form, my friends! 👌 Knew that she would be hurt, knew that she had feelings for him and still did it.

Oh and let's forget how he wanted the good, old Alina back! The sickly one that always depended on him for company and strength. He basically asked her to tear out a piece of her soul! 🥰🥰

And then, of course, jeopardized both her image and her safety by getting drunk and getting into fights (*whispering* we, the readers, are supposed to find this very romantic, okay? A man that drinks, sulks and makes the heroine feel bad. Just so you know).

Then the author made a 360° and presented Mal in R&R as changed and a very good person. Willing to die heroically for his love. How did she do that?

💕💕With zero development!!💕💕

One minute he's up there in the chapel being a jerk and the next minute he's underground and changed. I think it must have been the change of air, what do you think?

I have a huge problem with Leigh Bardugo about this. She presents Darklina as toxic. And it is. She presents Nikolina as little to zero toxic. And it is. But when she presents Malina, it's a really good, cute ship!! Not toxic at all with lots of possibilities! Leigh has constantly defended it saying "Oh but Mal was a teenager".

Ma'am? I was a teenager once and I never made my best friends feel like shit.

And as have everyone said before, Mal hits veeery close at home. He's every jerk that you have met in your life and you will meet again.

With Darklina you have nothing to fear. Because no one will put the collar of a magical stag around your throat, no one will have a nichevo'ya bite your shoulder, no one will ask you to abandon your friends so you can save some Grisha from the persecution. But plenty of men will slut-shame you for what you're wearing, plenty will feel insecure for being stronger and more famous than them, plenty will make you feel like shit for finding happiness and plenty will sabotage you by taking revenge kissing someone else.

Malina is a ship that is REAL.

While Darklina is your typical, fantastical ship.

Her hard efforts to pass it on to the readers as something healthy and inspiring is disgusting and makes me hate it even more.

Now from Alina's perspective things are even more tragic, since Alina never grows as a character because of him.

She always thinks "What about Mal? Will Mal follow me? What if he doesn't? It's my fault. It's all my fault. Where is Mal?".

This is it. This is the trilogy in a summary.

A heroine that seems more concerned about Mal than the country and people that expect from her to save them.

"Alina doesn't want a crown. That's why she left"

Girl, I don't want to go to work every day either.

Kids don't want to wake up to go to school.

People don't want to pay taxes every year.

But we do them because we MUST.

Just like Alina should stay, lead and rule because that's what she should do as the protagonist. Not pass on her own duties to others and say "gotta go lolz". Malina could be used as a plotline for Alina to gain strength from by casting aside Mal's influence and finding her own power inside herself. Instead Leigh did the opposite: stripped her powers (her own self) to fit in Mal's world.

And this excuse that the author had given ("some women don't want to wear crowns") is pathetic and idiotic.

Frodo didn't want to carry the Ring but chose to do the right thing. Harry didn't want to fight a war with a psychopath but did because it was the right thing. The Pevensie siblings didn't want to fight the White Witch and rule a country but did both because it was the right thing. Every hero in a proper story does the right thing. He or she becomes selfless and sacrifices his own happiness and well being to stand up against the evil and corruption.

In the trilogy instead we have Alina who had a responsibility and duty but unfortunately for Ravka and the Grisha she was not a responsible person but a girl that wanted to depend on a man. She didn't want to use her influence to protect her people but hide.

Apparently the "evil villain" understood the assignment better than the author ever did.

Alina never grew as a person or as a character. It was only Mal and Mal. If only he had stayed dead in R&R then the world would shine brighter. But no! The author brought him back and gave us an explanation with how that happened that I still don't understand because it doesn't make a goddamn sense.

I guess the easy explanation is: "I brought Mal back because Alina had to end up with him somehow. Deal with it."

And we just have to accept this (just as Alina did) whether we like it or not.

Well I don't.

Because I've met people like Mal and they're assholes. They want to be the strongest one in the relationship, they want their girl to look up to them and depend on them and when they make mistakes it's none of their fault.

Because I've met people like Alina that try hard to please their man while in the meantime they "crumble down" emotionally and feel insecure. They never shine with their own light but seek only the one that their toxic partner can give to them. Without it they're lost.

Because I've met couples like Malina. And it's never a happy relationship or has a happy ending.

And when you try to pass on this relationship in fiction as something healthy, then you really need to reconsider.

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Worldbuilding

Thanks so much for the interest in this series on my previous post, I’m excited to share it with you :)

One of the strengths of the Grishaverse worldbuilding is that the different countries and cultures take clear inspiration from the real world, so the reader is able to infer a lot of the small details without having to be spoon-fed the information. For example, we don't need a long, info-dump explanation as to why surnames in Shu Han are constructed from the prefixes "yul" or "kir" based on sex and the first name of the parent (eg Kuwei Yul-Bo, son of Bo Yul-Bayurr) because we understand that the country is partially inspired by Mongolia. And even if we don't make this immediate connection, looking at characters like Tolya Yul-Batar and Tamar Kir-Batar we understand how to infer the source of the name because of it's basis from many different naming conventions in our world, such as the -son, -dottier, or -bur suffixes in Iceland. Something I think I see authors do a lot is struggle with the balance in this kind of situation, but personally I find that Leigh Bardugo does it really well. We don't need to be told the extensive information about this, even if she knows it or has some idea about it for herself, because it isn't relevant to the story. If we were told about it in great detail during the Grisha Trilogy or the SOC duology, it would feel a lot like info dumping. But by telling us what it's necessary to know about the Shu royal family in KOS/ROW and letting us fill in the gaps, we feel that we have enough information to both understand and keep the story moving forwards. All we're actually told, to my recollection, is that the Shu queens maintain the given name of the first queen of Shu Han rather than their mother's name to unify the family and to maintain the status symbol of the royals. The information we've been given from this that's immediately relevant to the story is an explanation as to why the character doesn't take her mother's name, so we're not confused or distracted by that as we read on, but we also know that Shu Ha, or at least its aristocracy, is a matriarchy, that the Shu people still feel a great respect for their first queen, implying further that there is a great respect for heritage in the country, and that the Shu monarchy feel the need to remind people of that first queen for what is probably a fear of unsettlement in their power and therefore a need to remind people that this is their 'birth right'.

In my book, there are futuristic technologies made possible by the blending of science and magic, such as a scanner that can identify several genetic markers and is connected to a national database in order to identify anyone, that is used very similarly to a passport system, as well as by the justice system. But it's not necessary to explain the set up of the database, or that the earliest generation of the scanner was developed in the 16th Century, because that doesn't move the story forwards. Instead, I focus on the impact that the technology's usage has on one of the main characters, who has to have routine police and governmental contact because she witnessed the destruction of her home and the murder of her family at age 10. The case is so famous that at the equivalent of passport control to know that her information is about to appear on that database and the person is going to know what happened to her is deeply stressful for her, but there are no alternatives because this system is considered far safer than any paper-based system that could be cheated or faked. My aim is to actually say that the scanner recognises the person and brings up their information so that I can use it to move the story forward through the emotional response of the character, whilst letting the reader infer anything else about the system. I also don't have to tell you that the technology has been around for centuries, but if I have a stranger to the technology describe it and casually mention that 'Generation 18' or something similar is written on the side, you know that it's been around for an extended period of time.

I hope this made sense and was somewhat helpful, I thought I wouldn't go into too much detail and instead split this into multiple posts. Thanks for reading, and if there's anything in particular about worldbuilding you'd like me to talk about let me know and I can give it a try :)

[darklinaforever]

I'll always wonder how the antis created this stupid Darkling myth based on Leigh Bardugo's toxic ex when... well it's just not true and anyone who did their research would know that. Especially since it is an argument that is still brought up to me today for certain, which is worrying. The Darkling is based on the villains / antagonist (generally belonging to the villainous crush category) that Leigh Bardugo loved. His most notable inspiration is Jareth the goblin king from the film Labyrinth with David Bowie, or even Raistlin from Dragonlance (even if ironically these characters are not real villains at all). She never based the Darkling on a toxic ex. She simply said that she was coming out of a bad relationship when she was writing the Grisha trilogy. This stupid rumor was invented simply to make yourself appear morally superior by pretending to defend Leigh Bardugo's honor when in truth, you don't really care about her and this bullshit you are spreading is precisely an insult to his person more than anything else. You claim to respect the author by doing this but in reality you are doing quite the opposite. Not to mention that Leigh Bardugo herself already validated Darklina / Alarkling in ship time by saying that everyone was free to like what they wanted. So we have to stop pretending to defend I don't know what, all because of a ridiculous hatred towards a fictional ship deliberately written to be romantically ambiguous and fascinating since it is essentially inspired by the author's own crushes on fictional bad boy. Let the antis go fuck themselves again.

[ncarnesir]

A Story of her Own

This is the story of a Sun Summoner that is much much older than the Darkling and is looking for her own haven if one might say. Can Aleksander be that for her? Is it even what she's looking for? Well you'll have to read the story to know ;)

Art on the moodboard is from Abel Klaer

Back in 2021, after watching Shadow and Bone for the first time, I somehow got inspired and started writing. And the result was this, my very first fanfic, A Story of her Own.

To be honest, there are a lot of cringe parts specially in the beginning and you can tell I'm newbie writer, but I'm still super proud of it. What I'm less proud of is that it's still not finished, but I've been working a lot on it recently so maybe I'm finally going to complete this.

I am taking a looooot of liberties in this, regarding canon, the magic system, the history of the world. But I do think it's at least coherent. Also there's a lot of smut because... I like that.

Chapters: 41/~70

Fandom: Shadow and Bone (TV), The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con

Relationships: The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova/Alina Starkov, The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova/Zoya Nazyalensky, Mal Oretsev/Alina Starkov, Zoya Nazyalensky/Mal Oretsev

Characters: The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova, Alina Starkov, Mal Oretsev, Baghra (The Grisha Trilogy), Genya Safin, Zoya Nazyalensky, Ivan (The Grisha Trilogy), Fedyor Kaminsky, Nikolai Lantsov, Nina Zenik

Additional Tags: Darklina - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Happy Ending, Endgame The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova/Alina Starkov, Romance, Angst, Fluff, Smut, Mutual Pining, Simp The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova, BAMF Alina Starkov, Morally Grey Alina Starkov, Sankta Alina Starkov, Older Alina, Older Woman/Younger Man, Who's scheming really ?, Morally Ambiguous Character, different POV, Minor Character Death, mild graphic depiction of violence, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempts, annoying pet names, Mention of triggering subjects coming in the future, Potentially more graphic depiction of violence coming in the future, Unlucky Zoya, Sun Soldier Malyen, BFF Genya, We hate Baghra, Scheming Nikolai, Apparat is not a bad guy, Several Explicit Sex Scene, Dubious Consent, Light Dom/sub, Oral Sex, Dream Sex, Manipulative sex, Rough Sex, Minor sex scene between The Darkling / Zoya (before Alina), Minor oral sex scene between Malyen / Alina, Personal interpretation of how amplifiers work, Personal interpretation of different grishaverse myths, Mainly based on the show, And the Wiki, English is not my 1st language, English is not my beta’s 1st language either, This thing is a full story (with plenty of smut for fun), Rated non-con because, Dream sex she doesn't know is not really a dream, Kissing while the other is not aware, NO rape

Summary:

Everyone always supposed the Sun Summoner would appear one day, the Darkling first, but somehow, they never imagined that maybe she was already there, among them.

Or how Alina is much older than she looks like and is playing a game of her own.

[stromuprisahat]

Wait... I just read the news about the Darkling and... How come he could pass for a Shu?! Wtf?! OK. This information is just awesome, and it's outrageous that we've ever had fanart to represent this aspect of the character. But also... Why was it never named in the original trilogy? Are you going to tell me that no one would criticize this aspect of the Darkling's appearance when he is extremely feared and already talked to death about his back because of his nature as a summoner of darkness? Nobody said anything about him looking like the enemy too? The grishas, ​​okay. In the book, grishas are simply judged as grishas and not Fjerda or Shu. But for non-Grishas it's a different story. Also, it's a Leigh Bardugo thing to retrospectively change details about her characters. Here we have the Darkling which looks like a Shu. But in the King's of Scars duology Zoya suddenly becomes a character of color when it seems to me that she was white in the original trilogy. And then, Alina has no official age in the trilogy, but must surely have been around 18 or more in volume 1 (if we try to calculate), but who is however changed in the other volumes to say that no she was only 18 when she "died" although the author specifies that she was a minor in volume 1 to reinforce his stupid idea of ​​an Alina victim of the Darkling as much as possible.

Aleksander is easily explainable. He's mentioned to be "able to pass as Shu", which doesn't necessarily mean he'll look like a "typical" citizen. He's dark-haired, fluent in the language... since Ravka has a long, turbulent history with Shu-Han, there will be disputable areas and its inhabitants, who look accordingly. DitW comics solved it elegantly, by making Baghra tan, therefore Aleksander would be assumed to be a product of mixed marriage.

Zoya is a simple collecting of wokie points. Alina never forgets to mention POCs, so the girl, who's been bullying her (and fucked her not-bf) would certainly be more than just "stunningly beautiful". Zoya from the pre-KoS fanarts "approved" by the author was pale, Zoya from the official art for KoS is visibly tan, yet she's described as not-Suli looking?! She's Suli out of nowhere, while for other characters it would cover at least 40 % of their description [See: Paja, the Alkemi in S&S].

As for Alina's age, there have been posts counting it, saying it's okay, there have been others counting it is not corresponding... I might get to read them properly, I think I have at least two saved in drafts, but I don't really care enough rn. Alina in show had been aged-up, and while it didn't help her maturity, it certainly didn't save us from fandom police calling Aleksander a paedo groomer, so...

[ignyxdaughter]

𝐗𝐈𝐗 - 𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐒 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐍

(𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 /𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐤𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐨𝐳𝐨𝐯𝐚 𝐱 𝐤𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐤𝐚𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐨𝐧)

MASTERLIST

READ ON WATTPAD

A/N: English is not my first language. I’m gonna mix the books and the tv show to make the story line clearer (I read soc, the grisha trilogy and its tales). I don’t own Shadow and Bone and TO/Legacies characters; they’re, respectively, Leigh Bardugo, L. J. Smith and Julie Plec. Also, this is how I think the Darkling is,and some of the events will be changed due to the story's course!

words: 2873

warnings: mentions of witch/grisha hunt

────────── ★ ★ ★ ──────────

They are now cuddled, both their backs resting on the Black Heretic's fountain while gazing at the woods. The witch rests her head on the Grisha's chest, hearing the calming rhythm of his heartbeat. Him, on the other hand, lets his thumb caress her arm.

This is all so new to them, so... peaceful. It seems like a weight has left their shoulders as soon as they found equality in each other, the desire of wanting someone to understand them finally fulfilled.

"So—", Katherine's soothing voice breaks the comfort silence "what made you change your mind?"

Kirigan doesn't take his eyes off the tree he's been looking at for the past minutes. He is still enjoying the fantastic sensation of believing that everything is going to be alright now. "I started to think about what you had said. The Second Army is young, none of them have experienced the Ravka before the Fold. They have the idea that the Unsea is the issue, and that all of Ravka's problems will be solved once it vanishes. However, it is the complete opposite: if we destroy it, things will worsen." She nods, patiently waiting for him to continue. "There is no way to guard the entire border, therefore, Ravka will be exposed to many travelers. The Fjerdans and Shu Hans will take advantage of the country's vulnerability and attack. The drüskelle will have more access to accomplish their hunts too." He turns to the woman by his side, who is gazing at him since he started speaking. "Grishas will be in great danger if the Fold is destroyed."

"The Supernaturals too."

"Ravka will be no more safe haven."

"No, it won't."

"Also—", he takes a sharp breath to gather forces to tell her his conclusion "you were right."

The shadow singer's smile almost reaches her eyes. Oh, how she loves to be told that! No matter how many times that often happens, the pride feeling filling her chest always appears. "Pardon? I don't think I quite heard you."

"I won't repeat myself, Katherine."

"Why not?" Her smirk increases as she sees him scowl towards her. "Your words had such a beautiful sound."

He rolls his eyes. "You are not used to hearing that, I assume."

"Oh, no—", she chuckles. "I am more than used to it. After all, I am always right."

"If people see Alina's powers expanding the Fold, they will label Grishas as aberrations again." He ignores her to continue his line of thought. "Another hunt will be made and, with the Unsea blocking the borders, it'll be difficult to escape. The only way to protect ourselves will be killing all the hunters, which will practically be almost all otkazat'sya."

Ravka will be the stage of a massacre, the unsaid words float through the air. All due to the fight for survival.

"I want my country to be a safe haven, not a remembrance of a bloodshed."

Katherine's gaze softens in compassion. She shares that wish with him; she wants the Grishas and Ravka's Supernaturals to see their country as a secure place where they cannot fear. It would be wonderful if Os Alta transformed into what New Orleans is to many: home.

"Although living now more peacefully, your people still dread, Kirigan. Even receiving all the trainment in the world, there is still the terrifying thought of being attacked by the drüskelle and losing a fight with them. That fear will only grow if they witness a magical imbalance, especially one made by their General. Your Army will work based on dread instead on loyalty, and that is dangerous, because, soon, they will grow tired of feeling this." Her light green eyes are full of worry as she looks at him deeply. "This happened a lot through the centuries, and it always ended with the leader murdered by his own people."

"I know. I searched about those historical revolutions." Her eyebrows raise in surprise to see The Darkling agreeing. "Most of them were because the monarchy prioritized the court instead of the commoners, which were the majority. Only a few people had good life conditions, while the plurality suffered with poor ones. They got sick of injustice and repression, tired of having to survive to make others live. They wanted that possibility for themselves, so, after generations had passed and nothing had been done, they decided to fight for it."

"I witnessed some revolutions and that is what happened, indeed."

"I have lived the conditions of these commoners." Kirigan admits with a heavy chest. Sometimes, he is still affected with the memories of his tough childhood. He used to eat poorly, suffer from the cold, fear the dark when the night came, train for straight exhausting hours in order to learn how to control his powers, have to make new identities in a short period of time, and pass through many other unpleasant experiences. "It was terrible."

The sudden warm hand on his cheek tells him that he is not alone, that Katherine has suffered the same as him and as the many unfortunate people that were part of revolutions. "Survival isn't life, Kirigan. But it is just when you are old that you learn that the change will only come if you fight for it. That's why your Grishas are so immersed in the Fold's utopia: their youthness makes them believe that the time has finally come, that Alina will be the savior to fix all the problems." She offers him a sad smile. "My people are old and are struggling to live in Os Alta poorest area. One of the reasons why they hate your lightscum is this, since she represents all the illusion they had once believed."

"So they are willing to fight for change?"

She nods. "With all of their strength."

"If I promise better life conditions, will an alliance be possible?"

"Only if you guarantee that you have no intentions to destroy the Unsea. Firstly, you have to win their trust, especially the leaders' trust, then you may focus on a deal."

He gently grabs her hand that still is on his cheek. "I think I'll need a bit of your assistance, then."

The witch smirks as soon as she sees the glint on his dark brown eyes. "It will be my pleasure."

────────── ★ ★ ★ ──────────

"I swear it was her, Genya!" Michelle stops on her tracks as she hears Alina's voice echo through the room she was entering to clean.

"That's impossible."

"No, it isn't, and you know it!"

The Tailor shakes her head, making many of her red strands fly in the air. "Ms. Anya was playing a dangerous game here, Alina. The Darkling saw her as a threat and sent the oprichniki after her. She's probably dead now."

The Sun Summoner's brown eyes widened in shock. "Dead?"

"Yes." No. Michelle had to restrain a scoff. "I honestly think she was a spy."

"A spy? Really?"

"She knew too much for an ordinary otkazat'sya."

While starting to tie the room where the two Grishas were, Michelle began to make her own opinions. They aren't completely wrong: this specific servant knew too much and was considered by the General himself a threat, which led him to hunt her. However, she is pretty much alive, or better, Katherine Mikaelson is alive. No one knows what happened to Ms. Anya, she just... vanished.

"But, Genya, I swear I saw her today!" The blond's body stills as she cleans a desk. "Are you sure about that all? She seemed so real."

"There's no way Ms. Anya isn't dead, Alina. You probably were tired and hallucinated."

The younger girl looks deeply at the other, brown eyes meeting blue ones. "I know what I saw. Ms. Anya was at the beginning of the woods early this morning. She was hidden, but I saw her looking at Kirigan's chambers."

Oh, damn it, Katherine! You let yourself get caught by a teenager?! Michelle's face instantly turns into a scowl due to the anger she is feeling towards her cousin. By the Ancestors, Kat, you really turn into a fool when you like someone!

The Tailor takes a few seconds to answer her friend, but, finally, she shrugs her off with a hand. "I still think it's nothing to worry about."

I hope so, Genya, because I'm gonna kill Katherine if she drags the family into another trouble with insane plans.

The water singer leaves the Sun Summoner's chambers with heavy steps. As a way to calm herself, she goes to her little room and begins to read one of the books she had picked early in the morning. It is written in French, which eases her off with the thought of being close to her native language, and the author describes actions that may help people who are suffering with memory loss. After all, Michelle isn't certain that a spell will recover all of Agatha's remembrances.

Former lovers who had a long and healthy relationship with the victim may trigger good memories. However, the paramour must reproduce habits that were performed frequently during the time they were a couple.

Her blue eyes widened in sudden realization. There is someone that can aid them.

Of course, she didn't talk to Agatha's ex-lover for decades, but she had a good relationship with her; every Mikaelson — unless Katherine — had. The woman is a mesmerizing person and powerful witch, always willing to help the Supernatural. Michelle is sure that if she sends her a letter explaining about Agatha's current situation, the woman will appear in Os Alta in less than a day.

The water singer closes the book with a smile and immediately stands up. She needs to tell Katherine her new idea, but if her cousin takes too long to arrive, then she will handle the matter in her own hands.

With that in mind, the blond confidently states: "If there's any of Kat's shadows here, tell her to meet me at the Little Palace's library now."

────────── ★ ★ ★ ──────────

Hours had passed, and the couple had to go back to their respective places. After Kirigan had just left with his horse, Katherine was almost entering a shadow to go to Praecantrix when she heard Ikatris' smooth voice: Your cousin wants you at the Little Palace's library now. Seemed urgent.

She frowns with the unusual situation and mentally asks the dark figure: Which one?

The spoiled French.

Despite knowing patience isn't one of Michelle's virtues, she can't help but worry, her intuition wanting to alert that something is about to happen. However, as an attempt to ignore this uncomfortable feeling, the witch rolls her light green eyes at the shadow's answer. You know their names, Ikatris. So why do you insist on calling them with these nicknames?

She can almost feel the creature smirking. Because it irritates them.

Katherine can't help but chuckle. Her cousins indeed hate all of Ikatris' nicknames and always tell her to talk to the shadow in order to make him stop, however, it never worked. He is immediately delighted as he sees Hope — manic tribid — sends him a death glare, Michelle — spoiled French — huffs in impatience, Nick — justice alpha — rolls his eyes in annoyance, Agatha — dramatic queen — holding the urge to attack him, and Levi — Kol's counterfeit copy — walking away from him to not get into a fight.

Why don't you give me a nickname too? I have never received one from you.

Because you're Katherine, there's no one like you. You are already unique.

She smiles, a warm sensation reverberating in her chest. Thank you, Ikatris.

The witch then orders her shadows to guide her to the Little Palace's library, where she finds Michelle pacing through the Norse Runes book session. She seems nervous, clenching her fingers on the long white skirt, her blond hair that is usually perfect, is now disheveled. "What happened?"

The French woman turns abruptly and looks at her in rage. "You!" She extends her hands towards the brunette as if wanting to strangle her.

Katherine frowns. "What have I done?"

"What have you—" She seems to be using all of her control to not start yelling in fury. "What have you done?!"

The shadow singer seems uncertain of her actions now. Has she found out about Malyen Oretsev? "Yes?"

"You let yourself be seen by Alina!"

The nervousness began to grow in her stomach. "What?"

"Today's morning she saw you in the beginning of the woods, looking at Kirigan's chambers. Is this true?"

Shit.

"I... I, ehm—"

"Damn it, Katherine!"

"I didn't know she was there! I was focused on a more important task!"

Michelle grabs her cousin's shoulders to make her look straight at her. "She's sure Ms. Anya isn't dead, and now I think Genya suspects that too."

The older woman shrugs as an attempt to exhale confidence in order to calm the blond down. "They don't know much, Michelle. I am sure it will do us no harm."

"You were supposed to be the responsible one who fret about things that go out of control, not me!" She lets go of the brunette and crosses her arms, a pout forming on her red lips. "I didn't enjoy this."

"Well, welcome to my life.”

"It sucks."

"I know." Katherine sighs and slowly approaches her frustrated cousin. "But I also know that you wouldn't call my shadows only to yell at me. What happened?"

Her blue eyes face the light green ones. "I have a plan that may work."

"About?"

"Agatha." She passes a hand through her long blond strands, a habit that she does when is restless. "There is someone that may trigger some of her memories, and, maybe, even help with the spell."

"That is wonderful news!"

"Yeah, but not for you."

She raises an eyebrow. "And why is that?"

The water singer looks away, averting her cousin's gaze. "I just want to know that this is the best for Agatha. I would never do anything that could harm her."

If Kathreine wasn't sure why the French woman was acting like that, now she knows: Michelle did the idea before consulting her, the brain of the family and the mastermind behind the plans. "Michelle—"

"And, maybe, I-I've become a little anxious because I haven't found Hope and it was taking too long for you to arrive."

She clenches her teeth, already predicting the enormous trouble she got themselves into. "Michelle—"

"So I took the matter in my own hands before consulting any of you and sent a letter to her."

"Michelle, who did you call?"

She gives her a nervous smile. "The brightest person in this world."

The shadow singer frowns, though her stomach is currently twisting in dread, since it seems that this someone could be a horrible person. "Who?"

"She is just so full of light, you know." Despite continuing to smile, the younger one  begins to hug herself, as if this would protect her from Katherine's reaction.

The realization sinks at the brunette's chest like an anchor. Soliel Alvarez is a light singer witch that was Agatha's paramour for half a century. She is a woman obsessed with power and very practical: get in her way and you will die. For her, time is precious, so, unless it's necessary, she doesn't waste time with torture ceremonies.

Beyond hating shadow singers for their ability to dim her glow, she also hates her own kind. According to her, light singers are people devoid of character and who do not deserve trust or loyalty. For these reasons, she feels no remorse when draining an equal; in fact, she takes satisfaction in seeing their despair as she senses the victim's power entering her veins and thus making her stronger.

For sharing the same thought as her about lightscums, Katherine doesn't hate Soliel, however, she is always careful towards the woman. After all, light singers aren't trustable. The adopted Mikaelson relationship with her is tense, and only Levi knows that his cousin slightly likes Agatha's ex-lover.

Soliel is a difficult person to deal with, someone that will always try to trick you if you aren't aware of her true nature. In other words, she is a brutalest version of the shadow singer, and Katherine isn't in her right mind to meet her. She is already worried with Agatha's cure, about her affair — is that what they have now? — with Kirigan, with Ravka's Supernatural's current situation and with the execution of the coup. Soliel here will only overwhelm her and worsen the emotional weariness she is still feeling.

"You didn't."

Michelle looks at the ground as if it was the most mesmerizing thing in life. "Her and Agatha's relationship was so healthy and ended so well. They're still friends and see each other sometimes!"

The British woman can feel her breathing fasten. "Please tell me you are lying."

"And the book said that a good ex-lover can help on triggering memories, so—"

"Oh, Michelle!"

"—Soliel's coming to Ravka."

Everything stops. The air in her lungs, the frustration, the racing thoughts in her mind and the nervous twisting in her stomach are all gone. Suddenly, the forces in her entire body disappear too. Soon, her clear vision is replaced by the dark and she falls on the floor.

[wesperlovechild]

⚠️ spoiler for shadow and bone s2 and shadow and bone trilogy ⚠️

TLDR: s2 failed to keep the main idea of the books in the absolute worst ways possible and now i’m mad

i’ve read almost all the articles and newsletters on why shadow and bone s2 turned out so bad, and i can’t say they’re wrong. there were WAY too many characters, plots, subplots (neshyenyer?), and settings. i could barely keep up with all of it (as someone who read shadow and bone and six of crows) and the whole time it was PAINFULLY obvious that the crows had the favored storyline, despite being the secondary storyline. another thing i’ve read in multiple articles is that that due to the six of crows characters being the more well-loved in the book world, the writers wanted to speed up and set themselves up for a six of crows storyline. look, i get it. we all love the crows. we all want to see the ice heist. we all want to see jesper say “maybe i liked your stupid face”. however that doesn’t mean that we should just skip through two whole books, cherry pick what we luck from six of crows and king of scars, and call it a season. because that was not a season. the second half wasn’t, anyway. i could bitch and moan about the numerous inconsistencies and continuity errors of s2, but there’s a few i really need to address.

the lack of the Soldat Sol and minimal appearance of the Apparat

a really big theme in siege and storm and ruin and rising that are often skipped over is the consistent deification of a singular person and what it does to the public perception of leadership. the show barely touches on it at all, save for alina insisting inej call her alina and not sankta alina. the members of the Soldat Sol, or sun soldiers, are there for their saint, alina. they are willing to hide in a cave or risk their lives for her, all of which is seen in the book yet the show leaves out any mention of them. we see this continuity in history of religion being a uniting force for people, and in some cases the leader of said religion is made to be a living saint and therefore not seen as human. they are put on a pedestal higher than the common person and what they do is more easily excused, allowing for a corrupt leader absolved of responsibility.

alina bringing down the fold on her own

i’ve seen many others talk about this too, but alina brings the fold down all on her own. i have two issues here. in the books, there’s a whole fucking army in the fold. in the show, there’s five people. in the books, upon using the third amplifier, the other people (otkazat’sya) there end up gaining the power of alina as she loses it. the lack of the army and community and teamwork of grisha + otkazat’sya which we see in the book lead to the idea that alina, the sun summoner, the saint, can do it all on her own. there is no need for a united ravka, for why must the people work together if sankta alina can do it all on her own? tying into that idea of teamwork, in the books the otkazat’sya in the fold bring it down altogether. alina doing it all on her own disallows the notion of “we did it together”, especially when we consider there is a grand total of one (1) otkazat’sya there when show! alina brings the fold down.

alina keeps her powers, becomes queen, and stays betrothed to nikolai

my main thing here is that she kept her powers. alina wanted a normal, boring life with mal. no powers. and in the books, she got that. in the show, she ends up being the sun summoner queen of ravka betrothed to nikolai. not a normal life, if you ask me. many critique ruin and rising as an example of the female protagonist losing her powers to settle down and have children, and it’s a valid argument until you realize that this is what alina wanted all along. obviously she was made for great things. the thing is, she’s already accomplished most of this big and notable great things by this time in the books. additionally, her use of merzost in the books was her ambition that led her to use all three of morozova’s amplifiers, not to bring mal back to life. albeit one more honorable than the other, the use of merzost led the the consequence of the her losing her powers in the books. i’ve also heard the argument that many fans don’t agree with alina losing her powers and settling down with mal in keramzin, leading to the change in the show. and that is my biggest issue. to that, i say, too fucking bad. first off, to deviate so strongly from the source material is to do a disservice to the books and honestly, Bardugo. alina used merzost and paid the price. additionally, the whole fucking point was to show that the deification of a person whether grisha or not has consequences. alina had to lose her powers for the practicality of it all. to let alina keep her powers is to betray the integrity of the whole damn story and to take in a whole other direction. i realize that book to screen adaptations will unfortunately never be down to the letter, but to change the whole direction? to change the main idea and values of the book? really?

and here’s the thing: the story of the show itself is not bad. if you take away the pressure of keeping in accordance with the series, it’s very well told (save the 738 plot lines stuffed into eight episodes). however, this is an adaptation. adaptations have the obligation to honor the storyline and main ideas/themes of the original work. it’s actually a really good plot twist for mal and alina to not be together after he’s resuscitated, or for alina to have shadow powers in the show. of course, you would need to know the content of the original books to get the full magnitude, but nonetheless, smart. in the end, the main problem of the show is that it fails to stay true to the books, in so many ways. if it had been able to stay true to the books, even with some deviation, as long as it came back to the main plot, it might’ve been able to keep the essence of the books. unfortunately, it strayed too far, and it ended up falling flat.

i still love this show and the actors, but the direction the story took with its stark differences made the last 2.5 episodes unwatchable for me. we’ll see if i watch the next season, if it gets renewed. this last half of the season was a perfect example of “the book was better”.

many of my thought were really just expanded ideas of what have been wonderful articulated in this article that everyone should read!!

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

@theblacktsar I’m putting this in a reblog because I am unfortunately verbose.

I’m generally not much of a KoS/RoW enjoyer but I don’t think I’d agree with that tbh. My biggest issue with the duology is that it occupies an awkward space between almost continuing the trilogy (and therefore upending its conclusion) instead of introducing new plot but then also not wanting to actually continue it, so Alina is sidelined.

But that being said the Darkling’s portrayal didn’t seem inconsistent to me from the trilogy proper. If anything I thought RoW was pretty soft on him with how both got demoted from primary antagonist and how he got a hero’s ending.

And I wasn’t really going off of anything any other character said about his behavior. What I meant about KoS confirming his preference being for a Sun Summoner he could groom is, what I mentioned above, that we know for a fact that there are other immortal Grisha he’s met and chosen not to associate with. It implies that he doesn’t entirely want for options as far as potential community goes. TGT makes it clear that he’s fixated with Alina both for her auspicious and unique powers, but also as an immortal life companion. On top of a need for power, a primary motivation for him does appear to be loneliness. When Alina loses her power, he still has lumiya and iirc he is around long enough to see the other sun summoners gaining their powers. But he’s devastated anyway because Alina isn’t going to fit into that narrative he created for himself of like a super special unique soulmate for him.

Part of that narrative hinges on the uniqueness of sun summoning, and it being complimentary to his own power (clearly they’re meant to be!) and that she’s the answer to his age old problem of the Shadow Fold. But also that her youth means that her personality is yet malleable and that she doesn’t have any of existing ties that matter. (To him lol.) I just don’t think he’d trust anyone who’d have an identity of their own that they’ve come into— aka anyone remotely nearing his own age or older— or anyone that’s been shaped by Baghra, so to speak.

So idk I think he wants someone that is his, that cannot be threatened by anyone or anything else, stemming both from abandonment issues and a severe need for control. That would result in him being fairly normal, or at least dismissive of, a sibling or any Grisha that is not completely within his control in one form or another.

But I do feel pretty strongly about any remotely involved relationship for him needing to begin with grooming/manipulation to make sure he is completely in control. Probably due to him spending so long being completely within his mother’s control.

Caveat that I think he’d be perfectly happy to present himself as like a kind oasis and protector to a young and impressionable sibling that was being raised by Baghra. But I just don’t think Baghra would have any more kids by the time he’s himself that cold, powerful and completely outside of her influence. And even so, her parenting style seems to hinge on uh…. extreme isolation lol. So again, I just don’t think she’d allow any sort of scenario like that, because she also needs to have total control.

Meta Question - What would have happened if the Sun Summoner was one of Baghra's kids too? Would she have controlled her? How would Aleksander react?

I just think there aren't far too many junctures where that could happen. Like I straight up can't see Baghra having any kids after the Shadow Fold exists. My reading of the canon timeline might be wrong, it's been ages since I read Language of Thorns, and I didn't like love it enough to reread lol but my understanding is that she only had other kids before Aleksander. So I could only really see an unknown older sister sun summoner. In which case she's probably off living somewhere reclusively and not keeping in contact, and therefore probably not actively under Baghra's thumb. Meanwhile I doubt Aleksander was like actively fucking insane and evil by that point. So if unaccounted for sister is like "hi I can help" then I think he'd... maybe *gasp* be normal enough about the prospect of a sun summoner at least. But also probably take it as carte blanche to continue fucking with his mostly unexplained mad science merzost experiments bc there's someone to clean it up. If-- imo more likely outcome-- sun summoner sister says nothing, or idk shows up and they later fall out, I think he'd probably still be on the look out for someone to fill that void who isn't older than him. Something vaguely posited by TGT and then made more explicit in KoS with the confirmation of other long lived Grisha/Saints that Aleksander has met, is that his obsession with Alina as Thee Sun Summoner isn't really one born of like zero other options. It's not just that he wants an immortal companion, he wants a companion he's groomed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And similarly in this scenario, I don't think he'd be happy with relying on anyone older and with their own agency. He'd still want to find someone with a sun summoning ability who he can control fully. Edit: Okay the sister in Language of Thorns is younger lol so there goes my theory about him being the youngest. I do still think that Baghra just isn't having kids post Shadow Fold (I feel like that's probably around the point where whatever is the status quo arrangement at the capital and Aleksander installing himself as The Darkling takes place. So like, whenever that happens and she's more involved with his political schemes to the point where she seems to lose all faith in him and also get depressed and get old and sit in a cottage and do nothing, I just do not think she is having kids! So the hypothetical unknown sister may be older to possibly pre shadow fold days younger, but still functionally an immortal. I generally stand by the rest of those thoughts though!

[emjenenla]

I'm Holding On; Why is Everything so Heavy? [a SoC Fanfic]

Modern AU. Kaz knew he only was only asking because he thought he was supposed to. Most people were like that; Kaz’s multiple lives and many secrets relied on it.

Warnings: violence, panic attacks, PTSD, mentions of car accidents, near drowning, sex trafficking

Title: I'm Holding On; Why is Everything so Heavy?

Author: Emjen Enla (Fanfiction)/emjenenla (Tumblr)

Teaser: Modern AU. Kaz knew he only was only asking because he thought he was supposed to. Most people were like that; Kaz’s multiple lives and many secrets relied on it.

Rating: PG-13/T

Canon/Timeline: Modern AU; same general time frame as SoC (Kaz is seventeen, Jordie is four years older which means he’s twenty-one)

Dominant Characters: Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, Jordie Rietveld, appearances by Jesper Fahey, Nina Zenik, Alina Starkov, Per Haskell, mentions of Pekka Rollins, Jan Van Eck, Wylan Van Eck, Mal Oretsev, one OC, various others

Pairings: technically more Kaz & Inej friendship than legitimate Kanej, mentions of Wesper

Warnings: violence, panic attacks, PTSD, mentions of car accidents, near drowning, sex trafficking

Notes:

- Long story short, I became obsessed with the idea of Kaz in a hoodie riding a subway with earbuds in so no one would try to talk to him and this fic happened. I hope you all enjoy. :)

-Special thanks to wylanvanwreck on AO3 and their story The Mighty Dregs as well as a post by @crows-and-co. Both formed the basis of the thought experiment that became Kaz in this AU.

-Also, why is Jordie in the Fanfiction archive character list as Joshie R.?

Disclaimer: I don’t own Six of Crows or “Heavy” by Linkin Park (the song I got the title from)

--

Kaz knew that his day was officially a bust when he had a panic attack in third period.

Okay, technically he didn’t have a panic attack in third period. He realized it was going to happen and fled to the bathroom, where he locked himself in a stall and waited until he could breathe again. The bathroom was thankfully empty. If someone heard him, one of two horrible things would happen; he’s be pitied or mocked. He’d lost a lot of his bully shielding when he’d cleaned up his school presence during the switch to high school. That change had been necessary both for Jordie’s peace of mind and to keep Kaz Rietveld and the Dregs lieutenant Brekker separate. Of course, that meant that he’d gone from that scary kid who smoked weed behind the school to a crippled AP student who no one thought could fight back.

Even worse than bullies would be if some well-meaning student told the nurse. Marya Hendriks was one of the nicest people on earth and she meant well, but if she figured out about the panic attacks she’d tell Jordie. Kaz had been hiding his admittedly shaky mental health from Jordie basically since the accident that killed their parents. He knew that was a bad idea in the long run, but it didn’t change the fact that therapy and meds cost money which was something the tragically orphaned Rietveld brothers did not have.

So he hid alone in the bathroom until almost the end of the class period before he admitted to himself that he had to go back. He felt shaky and a little panicky, but he was standing by the sink washing his hands when Jesper came in.

“What are you doing here?” Kaz asked. “You’re supposed to be in class.”

“So are you,” Jesper said. “You’ve been gone a long time. Are you sick?”

Jesper was Kaz’s oldest friend, though they didn’t spend as much time together as they once had. If asked Kaz would blame that on Jesper starting to date Wylan, though he knew it was at least partially because of the Dregs and the ever-lengthening list of things that Jesper didn’t know about.

“I’m fine,” Kaz said drying his hands and brushing past the other boy. “Did Dryden manage to explain anything today?”

“I don’t understand it,” Jesper said. “And neither does anyone else. Can you tutor me after school?”

“Lunch or tomorrow morning,” Kaz said. “I’m busy tonight.”

“Fine, lunch then,” Jesper sighed. He liked to have his lunch periods and he hated getting up early. “I honestly don’t get how you’re the only one who doesn’t get confused by Dryden. Everyone else is struggling.”

“That’s because I’ve long since accepted that Dryden doesn’t know how to do algebra and I don’t try to understand what he’s teaching,” Kaz said. “I still get all the right answers, so there’s nothing he can do to me.”

They reached the algebra classroom. Kaz’s bad leg was killing him after all the time spent curled up in the bathroom stall. He really should have been using a cane, but when the injury had first happened he’d refused. He’d come around to it after joining the Dregs because it turned out a cane was a pretty good weapon. Unfortunately, since the cane was now connected to Brekker, Kaz Rietveld couldn’t start using one.

Kaz opened the door just as the bell rang and students began pour out. He stuffed his hands into the big pocket of his black hoodie and tried not to hunch his shoulders to obviously. Touch aversion was on the list of things he’d pretended to get over to keep from worrying Jordie, in reality it was hard to shake the horror of being trapped with his parents’ bodies in a car that was slowly filling with water. The negligent and painful treatment he’d received from the doctors afterwards hadn’t helped either.

Kaz twisted his hands around the black leather gloves hidden inside his hoodie pocket and tried not to think about how much better he’d feel if he was wearing them. He could wear the gloves as Brekker because he could explain it away as trying to avoid leaving fingerprints, but there was no explanation for Kaz Rietveld wearing gloves.

If he was completely honest, he hated being Kaz Rietveld.

He crossed the room to his desk and began gathering his books. Dryden looked up from arranging papers on his desk. “Are you alright, Kazimir?”

Kaz knew he only was only asking because he thought he was supposed to. Most people were like that; Kaz’s multiple lives and many secrets relied on it.

“Yes, sir,” he said with a submissive smile that he knew Dryden’s ego liked. “Thank you for asking.”

~~~~

Kaz was feeling a little calmer by the time they got out of school. Helping Jesper with algebra during lunch had helped a lot. Kaz loved math; it was easy and straightforward and never failed to make him feel like he was at least partially in control of his life.

When the last bell rang, Kaz made his way through the halls to his locker, hands buried deep in his hoodie pocket. He unlocked his locker and pulled his ancient slide phone out of the front pocket of his backpack. The only texts he had were weird Instagram photos that Jesper had sent him during study hall. No texts from any of the Dregs which meant that things were still on for tonight.

Someone slammed into his back and Kaz almost broke the kid’s arm. He’d learned from being Brekker that nothing kept people from touching you without mockery or pity like the promise of violence to anyone who violated your personal space. Unfortunately, that was on the list of things that were frowned upon at East Ketterdam High.

He glared at the kid until he was gone, then pulled his second piece of ridiculously outdated technology out of his backpack. It was a 4th Gen iPod Nano in an absolutely revolting shade of orange. The thing had been Jordie’s first and bore his dubious taste in color as a result. Jordie had given it to Kaz shortly before their parents had died, and Kaz had been stuck using it ever since.

Still, it was better than having no music player at all. Kaz unwound the black earbuds and shoved them into his ears. He put his playlist of pirated music on shuffle and gathered up the rest of his things. Then he swung his backpack on and left the school.

He made his way to the nearest subway stop. Subways were pretty much the only type of transportation he could manage these days. He was so deathly terrified of cars that some days it was a struggle to cross the street, and buses could still be struck by other vehicles and be pushed off the road into water. Subways ran on tracks and had only limited interaction with other subways, so he could handle them.

The subway was busy enough that there were no seats. No one stood up to offer him a seat, but that was okay; Kaz didn’t want anyone’s pity. He hooked an arm around one of the poles and leaned against it, watching as the stops zoomed by. He finally gave into the urge to put the gloves on. The subtle leather covered his hands, and he felt a million times safer.

He got off the subway at a stop near West Ketterdam High. He was now on the opposite side of the Barrel from his school and the dingy apartment he and Jordie lived in. It was a long trip for what basically constituted as a commute, but when he’d joined a gang he hadn’t wanted to risk running into someone he knew from the East Barrel.

He climbed up the steps out of the subway station and set off down one of the streets. His bad leg was throbbing worse than before after the jarring it had received on the subway. He wormed a bottle of Advil out of his backpack and shook two into his hand. He chewed them so they’d kick in faster and put the bottle away. The Advil would barely help, but his prescription meds were too expensive to use most of the time.

His mouth was still full of the sour, acidic taste of medicine when he reached an old but well-kept house in a dingy side street. He climbed the front steps and knocked. A minute later Alina, Inej’s foster mother, answered the door. She was a young woman and dressed casually, her long, inexplicably white hair was hanging loose around her shoulders. “Hello, Kaz,” she said with a smile. “You know you can just come in. You don’t need to knock.”

“I know,” Kaz said stepping into the house.

The smile Alina gave him was fond and it made Kaz want to do something to wipe it off her face. “Inej isn’t home from school yet,” she said. “I made some cookies this afternoon, though. Do you want some?”

“Maybe later,” Kaz said. “I’ll wait for Inej upstairs.” He tried to avoid Inej’s foster parents as much as possible. He knew that they’d assumed he was Inej’s boyfriend though to be honest he wasn’t sure if he and Inej were even really friends.

He climbed the creaky stairs and headed into Inej’s bedroom. Her foster sister, Nina, was already there lying stretched out on her bed on the left side of the room. Kaz raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing here?”

“I was sick today,” Nina said in an airy voice that suggested she’d just skipped out.

“Fun,” Kaz crossed to Inej’s bed on the right side of the room. He took off his backpack and lowered himself to the floor, suppressing a hiss of pain. Then he leaned over and began rummaging under the bed.

He heard Nina’s sheets rustle as she rolled over. “Is it a big job tonight?”

“You know that I can’t tell you that.”

“Oh, come on, Brekker,” Nina whined. “I thought you’d stop this when I joined up.”

“Whether or not you’re a Dreg doesn’t change the fact that this is an active job,” Kaz said without looking at her. “Only people involved can know about it right now. If you want all the details, I’m sure Inej will be happy to fill you in tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Nina grumbled and fell silent.

Kaz pulled a heavy cardboard box out from under the bed and opened it. Inside were his and Inej’s knives, lockpicks and other equipment. He began separating his favorites out and strapping them to various parts of his body underneath his clothes.

“You know if Alina and Mal find those Inej is going to get in a lot of trouble,” Nina said. “This house has a ‘strict no weapons policy.’”

“I bought all of these,” Kaz said. “That means they’re technically mine, and I don’t live here.”

Nina snorted. “You know, I’m not sure Alina and Mal would accept that loophole.”

Kaz opened his mouth to respond, but something changed, and he knew Inej was there. He turned to see her standing silently in the doorway in her leggings and boots and oversized knit sweater. He didn’t know how he always knew when she was around, but he did.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi,” Inej crossed the room and began taking her knives out of the box. “How are you today?”

Kaz did not let himself think about the panic attack he’d had that morning. Besides, Inej didn’t know about those so he couldn’t tell her anyway. “Ready,” he said.

“Me too,” Inej said. Settling down to strap on her weapons.

Inej had been abducted by sex traffickers at fourteen. She’d been rescued a year later and put into foster care while the system tried to find her parents. Two years later and it was blatantly obvious that no one was actually looking for Mr. and Mrs. Ghafa, and Inej would probably be stuck in the system until she turned eighteen.

Kaz finished arming himself by sliding an oyster shucking knife into one of his battered high tops. He worked himself to his feet, ignoring the worried look Inej gave him and moved his backpack into Inej’s closet. His cane—a sleek black thing with a rounded knob on top—was also there, leaning against the wall. He took it out and tried not to lean too heavily on it.

“Ready to go?” He asked Inej.

She nodded. At some point she’d changed out of her fuzzy knit sweater and put on a dark-color zip front sweatshirt with a hood that she could pull over her head later to keep her braid out of the way.

“Tell me how it goes,” Nina called after them as they left the room.

Inej called goodbye to Alina at the front door and they let themselves out into the street. At the sidewalk, they turned right and began the walk to the Slat. Kaz knew that Inej rode the bus to the Slat when he wasn’t around. When he’d first started keeping his stuff at her house, she’d suggested they ride the bus a number of times. He’d gotten around it by simply ignoring her and walking; eventually she’d stopped asking.

It took them a little over twenty minutes to walk to the Slat, which was a beaten down four-story building of an indeterminable original purpose. Even though it wasn’t even five o’clock yet, the place still had a number of seedy looking people hanging around. Those were the gang members who made their livings working for the Dregs and nothing else. That was Kaz’s legacy to the gang; before he’d joined up and started running things Per Haskell had barely been able to pay his own expenses let alone anyone else’s.

Kaz let himself and Inej in through the creaky front door, then he stalked across the big front room and knocked on Per Haskell’s door. “Come in!” the gang leader called and Kaz stepped inside leaving Inej outside.

“Just letting you know that Inej and I are here,” Kaz said.

Per Haskell looked up and snorted. “You look like a high school nerd, Brekker, that undercut doesn’t help.”

Kaz looked down his oversized hoodie, dark jeans and old high tops. “This is how I dress, sir,” he said hoping he didn’t sound like a petulant teenager, this was not the first time he and Per Haskell had had this conversation. “If you want me to wear a full suit, give me the money to buy one and I will.”

Per Haskell hacked out a sound that was half laugh half smoker’s cough. “That would be something to see,” he said. “When are you leaving for the job?”

“When it gets dark,” Kaz said. “It should only take us an hour or two”

“I’ll let you handle this,” Haskell said leaning back in his chair and reaching for the large mug of room temperature lager sitting on the desk. He spoke like there had been a chance he would come. Per Haskell hadn’t done any real work in as long as Kaz had known him; he didn’t even know exactly what the plan was, only what the goal was.

“I can handle it,” Kaz said without letting any annoyance in his voice. He reminded himself that his long-term goals relied on Haskell’s incompetence. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

~~~~

When the sun set, he and Inej rode the subway out of the Barrel and into the business part of Ketterdam. At this time of day, comparatively few people were heading into the business district because people didn’t live there, so they were both able to sit, something Kaz would never admit to being relieved about.

After they got off the subway they only had to walk a couple blocks before the headquarters of Van Eck Industries rose up before them. They stood on the corner looking up at the darkened windows. Kaz pulled off the backpack he’d brought from the Slat and pulled out a pair of ski masks. It was almost hilariously like something out of a movie, but they needed to make sure their faces didn’t end up on any of the building’s copious security cameras. They would deal with them, but only from the inside.

They both fitted their masks on and became a pair of extremely stereotypical bandits. Then they headed across the street to the employee entrance. The door was locked with a randomly generated password, but Kaz whipped out one of the laptops he’d bought for the Dregs with Per Haskell’s money and within seconds had bypassed the lock and they were in.

Once they were inside, they made their way to the security room. The guard on duty tonight was exceedingly lazy which was why they’d chosen tonight for the job. When they entered the security room, the man was sitting at his desk watching a soap opera and vacantly munching on potato chips. He obviously wasn’t watching the many security camera monitors around him, because if he had been he would have seen the two masked people slinking through the hallways.

Inej crossed the room on silent feet and punched the man a couple times with a pair of brass knuckles she always kept in one of her pockets. When he passed out, she heaved him out of his chair and began to drag him towards a closet.

Kaz sat down in the security guard’s chair, stuck a flash drive into the computer and released the most potent of his half a dozen custom computer viruses into the system. When he was finished, he glanced at Inej who stood in the center of the security room watching the security footage on the computer screens flicker out. “I’ll never get tired of that,” she said with a smile.

Kaz smiled as well and made sure he kept his face turned away until he could smooth out his expression again. “Whatever,” he stood up, and pulled his mask off. Now that the security cameras were out of commission there was no reason to keep wearing it. “Let’s move. We’ve got thirty-one minutes before the second security guard finishes her round and gets back here.”

~~~~

Jan Van Eck’s office was on the top floor of the building. With the computer virus in effect, Kaz had to open the electronic lock by opening it up and fiddling with the wires, but it still took him less than a minute. He’d started to learn to pick locks at age nine, while in the hospital after the accident and trying desperately not to think about any of the bad stuff. He’d kept practicing afterwards and now he was one of the best lockpicks in Ketterdam.

The door to Van Eck’s office opened into a borderline ridiculously expensive space that was exactly what you’d expect of man of his wealth and famous arrogance to have. A DeKappel painting hung on the wall behind the desk. Kaz and Inej lifted it down to reveal the safe.

Inej stood guard by the door while Kaz cracked the safe. Even though they were in the middle of a big job, Kaz found his nerves settling. Lockpicking was as relaxing as math.

He got the safe open in what he estimated to approximately half the time it would have taken the Dregs’ second best lockpick. He swung the safe door open and shone a flashlight inside to get a better view of the contents. There were stacks and stacks of cash inside along with some other boxes and papers. Kaz whistled softly. “Someone learns to learn that keeping copious amounts of cash in his safe is just asking for it to be stolen.”

“Is there a lot?” Inej asked.

“Yes,” Kaz began taking out the cash. It was all carefully tied up in those little paper slips you got on bills from the bank. Kaz estimated there was around twenty thousand dollars. His fingers itched to take the money for himself. Twenty thousand dollars would take care of rent and food and all that credit card debt Jordie pretended they didn’t have. He pushed the urge away; Per Haskell might be one of the most useless generals in the Barrel but stealing from him was still a bad idea.

Inej left her guard post and began loading up her backpack with money. Kaz dug deeper into the safe and pulled out some jewelry that was probably worth a couple hundred dollars apiece. Kaz stuffed them into his own backpack with part of the money and laptop he’d used on the outside door, then began going through the papers. This was not strictly part of the plan, but Kaz and Inej built their reputation on having dirt on everyone in Ketterdam so it wouldn’t be right to pass up a chance to gain some new information.

He found a couple worthy-looking papers and memorized them in a handful of seconds. When he was finished he looked around the office. His eyes fell on the DeKappel sitting in its frame against the wall. It was probably a nice painting, though all art looked the same to Kaz. Still, it was expensive and the fact that Van Eck had it so prominently displayed meant that it was important to him...

“Do we have a screwdriver?” Kaz asked Inej.

“Yeah,” Inej said still focused putting the last of the money into Kaz’s backpack. “Why?”

Kaz grinned as his heartbeat sped up. This was going to be great. “We’re taking the painting.”

Now she looked up at him, confusion on her face. “Why?”

Kaz’s smile got even bigger. “Why not?”

She stared at him for a moment then she smiled and shrugged. “Sure,” she dug around in the front pocket of her backpack and pulled out a screwdriver. “Here you go.”

It took them almost ten minutes to get the back of the frame off and the painting taken out. Once that was done they rolled the painting up and fitted it carefully into Inej’s backpack. Then they put the back of the frame back on, closed the safe and hung the empty frame on the wall again.

“Alright,” Kaz turned towards the door, pulling on his own, now significantly heavier backpack. “Let’s get out of here.”

They left Van Eck’s office and headed down the stairwell towards the outside. They were almost to the ground floor when they heard footsteps and voices. They both froze and stared at each other. “How long have we been here?” Inej asked.

Kaz checked his watch. “We should still have ten minutes,” he said. “Maybe-”

A door above them opened. Kaz looked up and his stomach clenched. A couple big, burly men Kaz recognized as members of the Dime Lions were pushing their way into the stairwell. He and Inej looked at each other in shock. Where had the Dime Lions come from? Had they just so happened to plan a break-in for the same night?

“You there!” one of the Dime Lions yelled. “Intruders! Stop right there!”

“Run!” Kaz told Inej and they took off down the stairs.

More Dime Lions entered the stairwell from the bottom. Inej slid down the railing of the last flight of stairs and slashed at them with her knives. Kaz reached the bottom a second later and took out one of the Dime Lions with a well-placed swing with the knobbed end of his cane. They shoved their way out of the stairwell. Within seconds they were out of the building through a different side entrance that opened onto a boardwalk facing the harbor.

“Split up,” Kaz ordered. “We’ll meet up later.”

Inej nodded and took off one direction. Kaz knew that within minutes she’d be up a building and well out of any danger.

He, on the other hand, had it a bit more difficult. His leg meant that he couldn’t climb as quickly as Inej could and he couldn’t run as fast either. Still, he would get away; he was way smarter than basically everyone Pekka Rollins had working for him.

Kaz pounded down the boardwalk with the Dime Lions after him. It sounded like most of them were after him. Which probably meant that they’d recognized him and Inej. They knew that he was Brekker, the most wanted man in Ketterdam, and they knew they’d never catch Inej.

He knew he’d never outrun the Dime Lions, so he just needed to find a good place to stand and fight. He turned left and ran along a narrower part of the boardwalk that jutted out into the water. When he was halfway along it he whirled around and lifted his cane, prepared for a fight.

Half a dozen Dime Lions pounded down the boardwalk after him. The front two charged him immediately. Kaz simply stepped out of the way so one ran into the boardwalk railing and beat the other over the head with his cane.

He stepped away until his back was against the railing opposite the one the Dime Lion had just hit. “So what are you all doing here tonight?” he asked with a classic Brekker smile. “Did the Dregs beat the Dime Lions to the pigeon?”

“We’re not Dime Lions,” one of the men said, eyeing Kaz like he was trying to come up with a halfway decent plan to attack him. “We work for Jakob Hertzoon.”

Kaz had never heard of Jakob Hertzoon before, but he also knew for certain that at least four of these people were definitely Dime Lions. You didn’t just switch loyalties in the Barrel, especially if you worked for Pekka Rollins. Something weird was going on here. He and Inej were going to have to look into this Jakob Hertzoon person. “Oddly enough, I don’t believe you,” he said.

“Give back the property you stole from Van Eck Industries, Brekker,” the man growled. That alone proved that he was definitely from the Barrel. Kaz’s face had never been picked up by the government, so no one outside of the Barrel gangs knew Brekker was really a kid.

“I think I’ll keep it,” Kaz said.

“Get him,” the man said and all six of them charged. Kaz swung his cane and caught the closest one in the nose. She screamed and stumbled back. Kaz got the next one too, but then the rest were on him, grasping at his clothes and backpack, shoving his up against the railing. Their touches were a million points of horror. Kaz struggled but couldn’t get free, his cane rolled out of his fingers.

They were trying to get the backpack off him. Kaz tried to twist away from their hands and felt himself fall backwards into space. He was weightless in the air for mere seconds before he splashed into the harbor.

The water of the harbor was cold, dark and dirty. Kaz couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. He couldn’t tell which way was up. He couldn’t tell anything at all, because he was back in that car eight years ago, trapped with his parents’ bodies while the cold, disgusting water creeped inside.

He struggled but it was in vain. He couldn’t get out of the car, he was going to die here. There was nothing he could do to stop it.

Then hands grabbed him and dragged him out of the water. He struggled to get air into lungs that didn’t want to inhale. He was out of the water, he wasn’t going to drown, but now he was going to suffocate.

Hands grabbed at him, trying to sit up him up. They were too much like the bodies of his parents which had bounced and pushed against him as the car filled with water. He shoved the person away. “Get your hands off!” he screamed with all the air his starving lungs possessed. “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! Dontouchme!”

The hands vanished, and Kaz collapsed again. Gravel drug into his cheek and that was what reminded him that he wasn’t still in the car; there was no gravel in the car.

He lay there gasping for an indeterminable amount of time until his vision cleared, and he felt like he could sort of breathe again. Then he peeled his eyes open and looked around.

He was lying on his side on a gravel bank underneath the boardwalk, the water lapping a few inches from his shoes. Inej was crouching a little further up the bank, as dripping wet as he was. She must have dived in after him and pulled him out.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I thought you were drowning at first, so I tried to sit you up to see if you’d breathe easier that way. I didn’t mean to make things worse.”

Kaz realized immediately that the game was up. If Inej had been less perceptive she might not have realized what had actually happened, and he might have been able to pull the drowning card, but she knew. He could tell that she’d recognized the panic attack for what it was. He could see her rearranging every interaction they’d ever had--everything about him that had never made sense from the buses to the gloves--to accommodate this new information. He could see her bursting through the armor that was his Brekker identity to the sad, weak, pathetic Kaz Rietveld underneath. It was horrible.

He forced himself to his feet. Cold, slimy harbor water ran down his body. He tried not to think of the car. “Let’s go,” he said attempting to sound normal with dubious success.

“Kaz,” Inej said carefully, still not moving any closer to him, “the Dime Lions left after you fell in the water. We’re safe here for a couple minutes if you want to catch your breath.”

“I’m fine!” Kaz snapped. He tried to walk and stumbled, catching himself on one of the boardwalk supports. “Let’s get back to the Barrel before one of the Dime Lions manages to come up with the brilliant idea of calling the cops.”

“Kaz,” Inej said. “You know you can-”

“Inej,” Kaz spoke over her with his nastiest tone. “Let’s go.”

~~~~

Per Haskell found Kaz and Inej’s sodden appearances hilarious and spend a good five minutes laughing until he had tears in his eyes. He was decidedly less pleased about the soaked money in Kaz’s backpack and the ruined laptop. He told them he was docking part of their shares even though the money would dry out useable enough and he thought the laptops were useless anyways. At least Inej had had the foresight to ditch her backpack before jumping in the harbor, so her half the money and the DeKappel were fine.

After finishing up with Haskell, Kaz and Inej returned to Inej’s house. Kaz had a change of clothes stored there for bloody jobs (jeans, a tee-shirt and another hoodie, this one navy blue) but not a second pair of shoes so he had to settle for being completely dry aside from his feet. He tried not to think about the harbor water squelching between his toes as he gathered up his school backpack and fished his iPod out of the front pocket.

Inej watched him from her perch on her bed. “You know you don’t have to leave just yet,” she said. “There are still some cookies left over from this afternoon. We could watch a movie. I could probably convince Mal to make popcorn.”

Kaz knew what she was doing, she was trying to convince him to stay because she was worried about him, because she thought he was weak. He would not allow that. “I’m leaving,” he said without bothering to come up with an excuse. He had no idea how he was going to salvage this situation, but he was going to have to do it somehow and he needed some space to think about it.

“Kaz,” Inej said. “I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable, but I don’t think that just ignoring that is a good idea. You can talk about it with me; you can trust me.”

He couldn’t trust anyone. He’d learned that in the years since his parents had died. Even Jordie, who should have been his partner in this quest for revenge, could not be trusted. Kaz had something he needed to hide from absolutely everyone in his life.

“No, we’re not going to talk about that,” Kaz said as coolly and Brekker-like as he could. “As far as you’re concerned that never happened. Never bring it up again, and if I figure out that you told someone else--anyone else--I will not hesitant to kill you.”

Instead of flinching back in fear, Inej lifted her chin. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “You’re not that cruel.”

“You should,” Kaz said even if he wasn’t totally sure if he would kill her either. “Good night,” then he turned and left the house.

~~~~

It was now after ten pm, so the subway was nearly empty. Kaz sat in one of the cars, folded over at the waist, his forehead pressing into his knees, eyes squeezed tight closed, earbuds blaring overly loud music into his ears. He couldn’t get his mind off how catastrophically badly tonight had gone. Kaz Rietveld’s weaknesses were not supposed to affect Brekker. Brekker was supposed to be strong enough to get revenge on Pekka Rollins.

One of the curses of having a memory like Kaz’s was that nothing ever faded. Pain never got duller. He could still remember the exact way his dead mother’s soaked hair had felt against his hand. He remembered the way blood had trickled out of his father’s mouth. He remembered struggling to keep his head above water when his leg was too badly shattered to kick. He remembered it all as if it had just happened, and he would for the rest of his life.

Mr. and Mrs. Rietveld had died after a multi-car pileup had forced their car and a couple others off a bridge and into the harbor. Officially, it was just a horrible accident, but the fact that the accident had been orchestrated by Pekka Rollins and the Dime Lions was an open secret among all of Ketterdam. When Pekka Rollins wanted someone dead, they died, but what Kaz had never been able to figure out was who the target that day had been. He knew it was ridiculous to get caught up that detail, but he needed to know. He needed to know who Rollins had been after. He needed to know what his parents had died for, once he knew that, he would gladly rip Pekka Rollins’ throat out and everything would be better.

Kaz wasn’t stupid, he knew that destroying everything Pekka Rollins loved and then killing him wouldn’t fix any of his problems, but he had to believe that. He needed to believe that killing Rollins would be the magical cure for everything that was wrong with his life; he didn’t know how he would keep going if it wasn’t.

The subway arrived at his stop. He got to his feet, hissing in pain. He chewed another couple Advil while he climbed out of the subway station and stuffed the bottle into the pockets of his new hoodie. He headed down the dimly lit streets to the tumbled down apartment building where he and Jordie lived.

Their apartment was a two room, one bathroom flat that they probably paid too much rent for. Still they stayed because as long as they paid the rent, the landlord would overlook anything. That had been especially helpful back when they’d both been minors and their uncle had never been around enough to constitute as their actual legal guardian.

Their uncle had been supposed to take care of them, but instead he’d fooled around and burned through their admittedly meager inheritance before Jordie reached eighteen. He also went on long trips without telling them where he was going or when he’d be back, so they’d mostly fended for themselves. They hadn’t seen him since Jordie had turned eighteen and Kaz privately hoped the man had managed to die, though he doubted they were that lucky.

Kaz struggled up the steps to the eighth floor, wishing the elevator actually worked. Still he eventually made it to the apartment and reached for the knob.

The door was unlocked.

Instantly on high alert, Kaz pulled out his earbuds and slid his backpack from his shoulders. He’d left all his knives at Inej’s, but the backpack was heavy enough to serve as a weapon in a pinch. He twisted the knob quietly and stepped into the apartment.

He made his way silently down the tiny hallway to the main room. He saw the form of someone sitting on the old, saggy couch. He hefted the backpack up and stepped closer, then stopped. “Jordie?”

Jordie jumped and whirled around, getting to his feet. It was obvious he hadn’t heard Kaz come in. His face twisted into a frown. “Kaz! It’s about time!”

“What are you doing here?” Kaz asked. “You work nights on Thursdays.” That was why he’d planned this job for tonight; he knew Jordie wouldn’t be around to notice he was gone.

“We’re not talking about me right now,” Jordie snapped. “It’s after eleven! I’ve been calling you for hours! Where were you?”

Kaz knew he was failing at completely keeping the surprise off his face, he hadn’t checked his phone picking up his backpack and apparently, he should have. “Hanging out in the university district with Jesper,” he said. He remembered that Jesper had mentioned that he and Wylan had been going on a date in the university district tonight, so perhaps if Jordie had called Mr. Fahey this story wouldn’t be instantly disproven. “We lost track of time.”

Jordie ran a hand through his shaggy dark hair. “Kaz, you can’t just wander around the city with no one knowing where you are. I should give you a curfew.”

For as long as Kaz could remember, Jordie had always been a little more. A little taller, a little heavier, a little better looking, a little more trusting, a little more tactful, a little better. It wasn’t until Kaz had created his Brekker identity that he’d truly acknowledged the ways that he was more. He was smarter, and braver, and a better fighter, and a better planner. He was more untrusting and untrustworthy, more hardworking, more reckless, more morally gray, and above all more vicious. Jordie was the better brother, but Kaz was the one who would get them their justice.

That was how he knew Jordie would never go through with the threat of a curfew. Jordie liked things to be easy; he knew that he would have to fight tooth and nail to impose something like that on Kaz and he’d rather not do the work. Kaz resented that on some level, because it was the same method of thinking that kept Jordie from truly trying to seek justice for their parents, but in this situation, it was helpful.

Suddenly Kaz was very tired. He’d had an absolutely horrible day and he really just wanted to curl up on the couch with a warm blanket. He’d make himself a mug of hot chocolate and maybe spike it with that bottle of whiskey that Jordie thought he didn’t know was hidden under the sink. He’d turn on the TV and watch whatever mindless programs were on until he fell asleep. Now his brother was here, and he had to deal with him instead.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

Jordie wasn’t done, “I asked off of work tonight, did you know that? I wanted to spend some time with you. We’ve barely seen each other recently and I thought it would be nice to have a night just the two of us. Instead you spend the whole night galivanting around the city and I was stuck here watching the hours tick by and thinking of all the money I was losing!”

Kaz would not stand for that. “You know,” he snarled. “If you wanted to spend time with me, you could have asked me in advance. You could have said, ‘Hey, Kaz, I’m thinking about taking Thursday night off, so we could hang out. Do you have any plans?’ like any normal person. You can’t just expect me to never have anything going on. I’m not a little kid content to sit around practicing magic tricks and waiting for you to finally have time to notice me!”

That was a low blow, and mostly untrue because while Jordie had had increasingly less time as he picked up jobs to try to take care of both of them, he’d always tried to make time for Kaz. Kaz knew he’d feel guilty about playing that card eventually, but right now it didn’t matter.

Jordie’s mouth opened and closed in shock. “How can you say that?” he asked. “Everything I’ve ever done is to make things better for you.”

“If you really wanted to make things better then maybe you would have stopped our uncle from spending all our money,” Kaz snapped. “Maybe you would try to make Pekka Rollins pay for what happened to our parents!”

“Kaz, I can’t either of those things!” Jordie snarled. “You can’t just expect things to work out the way you want them to all the time, sometimes you have to accept what you get.”

“And sometimes you can’t just lie down and let the machine walk all over you!” Kaz said.

“I can’t bring Mom and Da back, Kaz,” Jordie said. “Getting Pekka Rollins won’t bring them back either.”

“I know that,” Kaz snarled. “I’m not a child, but that doesn’t change that he still deserves to pay.”

“Let it be, Kaz,” Jordie said quietly. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“If that’s the way you want to be,” Kaz said crossing his arms. “Then I don’t see why you’re so angry about where I was tonight. I told you that I was hanging out with Jesper and we lost track of time. I’d known that we were going to hang out for a while, if you’d asked me beforehand we could have avoided this whole situation. Now, I’m going to bed and there’s nothing more you can do about this situation.” Then he turned and stalked off into the apartment’s only other room.

His bed was on the right and Jordie’s was on the left. He peeled off his wet shoes and socks and kicked them as far under the bed as he could so Jordie wouldn’t step on them or something and start getting more suspicious. He took off the gloves too; he was lucky Jordie had been too angry to notice them. Then he threw himself face down onto his bed without bothering to change. Perhaps his eyes were a little wet, but he’d never admit that; Brekker didn’t cry.

Jordie never came into the bedroom, and when Kaz got up for school the next morning he was already gone.

--

Honestly, I think that one of the things I enjoyed most about this story was exploring the dynamic between Kaz and alive!Jordie.

Anyway, hope you all enjoyed.

Emjen

[mure-sauvage]

It's always "Is Malina or Darklina the superior ship?" and never "Why are you guys having this discussion in the Six of Crows tag in the first place ??"

[rhosynviteri]

Ummm...I've seen a lot of people here and on Twitter be like "let's collectively ignore what LB did with Zoya's heritage". I'm going to do the opposite and TRY to show how much Bardugo f*cked up (I'm doing this mainly for myself. I need this out of my system). So let's start:

The Shadow and Bone Trilogy - Crooked Kingdom (2014-2016)

Zoya is white. Yes, LB never describes her skin tone, but she is the type of author who describes a character of color, no matter how background they are. I distinctively remember Paja, a Suli (the first one in the grishaverse if I'm not wrong) Grisha in Siege and Storm, whose heritage was mentioned outright even though she wasn't a really important character (she also literally died in the same book). But with Zoya? She appears in 4 books before King of Scars, and we get nothing. Apart from that, LB has reblogged this fanart in 2016. There (I will never be sick of showing it because it's the proof of the retcon) Zoya is very pale and LB has written under it this:

"Zoyaaaaaa!!! This is pretty much exactly how I pictured her."

King of Scars (2019)

This is the first book in Nikolai's, no comment, Duology. It has 39 chapters and 4 different PoVs (not counting the prologue one). One of them is Zoya's, she has 9 chapters from her point of view. In chapter 25 out of 39, we get this:

"She [Zoya's mother] had married for love - a handsome Suli boy with broad shoulders and few prospects"

That's it. That's all we get about Zoya's heritage in King of Scars. A retcon happens in one vague sentence, which someone easily can miss if they are even slightly not attentive. She is biracial in canon now (thanks for the rep, LB). I just want to point out that if Zoya hasn't been retconned, all the four PoVs would have belonged to white characters. I personally think that it was a last-minute change to somehow diversify her PoVs, especially considering how small and vague the mention was.

The Rule of Wolves Waiting Period (2019-2021)

Obviously, the canon biracial Zoya inspired even more fanart of brown Zoya, and LB herself has reblogged them and has put them on her stories. This had led a lot of people to believe that Zoya was indeed a visibly brown-skinned woman, to the point of believing that she was described as that (even tho back then we had only her hair and eye description, and that damn sentence). What made this idea even stronger? Official fanart like this, this and this, which LB has commissioned herself. The last one actually was part of the preorder offer of Rule of Wolves. Why would anyone believe otherwise after that? Even I would have believed it if I hadn't known better.

Then on February 17, this Kirkus review was posted. The part that matter for this post is this one :

"The multiethnic cast that includes queer characters and relationships showcases a White-passing biracial character grappling with identity and another character’s trans-coded journey."

Fans were worried that this white-passing character was Zoya, but what calmed them down was the fanart of the preorder. Because of course, LB would never do that, she would never commission a fanart with brown Zoya and then write her as white-passing (that's actually hilarious, because it's a LB type of thing to do).

Rule of Wolves (2021)

Zoya IS the white-passing biracial character grappling with her identity.

“Because I’m Suli.” Simple words, but she’d never said them aloud. She could feel her mother’s hands combing out her hair, placing a hat on her head to keep her out of the sun. You’re pale like me. You have my eyes. You can pass. The family had kept her mother’s name so that they wouldn’t draw attention. Nabri, her father’s name, was rubbed away like a stain.

We do get more stuff concerning her identity, how she feels about hiding this part of herself, and we get to know what she has experienced because of being biracial. I did identify with a lot of parts and they did speak to me, but it was so obviously done for diversity points (see the official fanart fiasco) that I just couldn't feel comfortable while reading the book.

Yes, a white-passing Zoya does make sense considering how Suli are treated in Ravka and how no one else ever mentioned her Suli heritage, but I think that LB handled it very badly. Her fans, especially brown fans, didn't deserve to be baited, and I believe that the fandom should not collectively ignore another Bardugo f*ck-up.

[dreamsatdusk]

Analysis:  Baghra and the Apparat

I received an Anon ask a while back and accidentally published it before it was done a while back.  Privated the post but decided to have the final product as a new post just in case; I don’t want it buried in tags from way back.

The Ask:

Hello! Can you do a breakdown on Baghra's character and the Apparat's? I'm interested in reading your thoughts about them

Thank you for the ask!  And apologies for the delay in response.

Baghra

One of the first Grisha meta posts I wrote years ago was about how the way Baghra and her hut are portrayed evoke the impression of Baba Yaga.  Her appearance, hut in the woods (likely amidst birch trees), and something of her attitude all lend themselves to it.  Since then, I’ve also come to think there might be a bit of tie in to the tale of Vasilisa the Beautiful, who was forced to go and bargain with Baba Yaga for a light against the darkness.  

Looking past that surface, in the trilogy we are presented with Baghra as a figure both ascetic and penitential, as well as bitter and unkind.  The latter traits are well explained by what we learn of her history:  she has had a long life filled with a great deal of loss, with countless threats to Grisha and particularly to she and her son, different as they are even from other Grisha.  Her childhood was a sad one brimming with trauma and what she recalls of her parents to Alina causes me to think that she did not feel truly loved by either one of them.  I think their treatment of her and behavior toward each other shaped her perspective on life in profound ways, ones she never got past.

But the former traits don’t have so obvious a cause on page if you look more deeply.  Her lifestyle is very austere despite the fact there is no need for it - she is not on the run and in hiding any longer as she was in the Darkling’s youth.  Her conversations with Alina in regards to her son are couched in religious terms:  she is worried about his being beyond redemption, she speaks of merzost as abomination, and so forth. In R&R, she has Misha read religious parables to her to pass the time.

This clashes with what we know of contemporary Grisha.  It is said at one point in S&B that Grisha don’t put much stock in religion and we see the Darkling does not seem to either.  Not to mention the fact that he and his mother knew at least several Grisha who later became considered saints.  I find it likely they suspected other saints could also have been Grisha - Grisha and martyred for it, their true identities obscured so later people could pray to them and not have to consider the ‘unnatural’ people they were.  It makes a lot of sense that neither Baghra nor the Darkling would invest much consideration in Ravkan religion as it is presented on page.  In fact, it seems like they’d find it more infuriating than anything.  And yet.

The Second Army has no need to lead lives of deprivation.  Yes, they eat ‘peasant-style breakfast’ and such, but their rooms are gorgeous, they have beautiful clothing, sugar for their tea and so forth.  Baghra surely wouldn’t be living in a tiny dark hut in the trees unless that is what she wanted.

There’s also the fact that she shows signs of not using her summoning powers.   Even before S&S, she’s apparently quite chilly a lot.  It makes sense she wouldn’t show she could summon shadows where other Grisha could see.  But the indication is she isn’t using her powers at all.   That is another way she seems to have chosen to deprive herself, to the point of impacting her health.  Perhaps she even hoped that it would lead to her death, but apparently it has not been enough to override the impact of her amplification talent.

Looking back at the woman seen in Demon in the Wood and was glimpsed in the tale she tells Alina of her past, it very much seems to be something happened to turn who Baghra was into who we see in the trilogy.  

I suspect much of the true reason is that she is pretty much a plot device in the story.  She needs to spook and horrify Alina into running.  Her talk of ‘redemption’ and ‘abomination’ are peculiar in terms of many other elements we see in the books.  I’m writing a meta on the amplifiers and merzost and such that goes into this further, but I’ve also written some in the past about how there’s no real reason to believe merzost is inherently bad. Baghra has clearly decided it is though and speaks of it and her son’s actions in absolutist terms.  Because she needs to in order to have the narrative run how it does, more than once.

And again, what reason would this character really have to put so much faith in Ravkan religion?  

What’s a possible in-universe explanation for this?  I think the creation of the Shadow Fold works well for that.  We find out that what the Black Heretic was actually trying to do was recreate Morozova’s amplifier experiments and something went wrong.  (This is the focus of the upcoming meta I mentioned above.). The Fold happened and all of the people within its bounds were transformed into volcra. All in all, a horrific situation, however much an accident.  This could have functioned as such a systemic shock to Baghra’s worldview that she sought solace and perhaps forgiveness in religion.  I suspect she felt guilt, which is pointed to in things she says in the trilogy.  Also, she’s the reason the Darkling even had Morozova’s journals - she went back to the village she was born in and found them, per R&R.

I still think her being invested in the Ravkan religion itself is a weak point, but could be generously explained by just how traumatized she was by the Shadow Fold situation.  She may have desperately wanted something to believe in.  That said, the lack of any sign in the books of what more lies behind Ravkan religion than Saints and the fact that Baghra knows that at least several of those Saints were actually Grisha, doesn’t make this the strongest argument to me.

I also wrote some weeks back on how Baghra was portrayed as emotionally and physically abusive to Alina and according to their own accountings in R&R, other Grisha as well.  In the early days of the fandom, I never really saw that acknowledged, though it has gotten far more recognition this year with new people reading the books since the release of the tv show.

Overall, she is a very bitter person and I think a lot of what we see of her is driven OOC by her being largely a plot device and IC by guilt.  She feels guilty about the Fold’s creation and so forth and lashes out at others in misdirected anger.

I think this also relates somewhat to her treatment of Alina in S&S and R&R.  She blames Alina for not ‘adequately’ running away (went after the stag instead), blames her for the Darkling putting himself beyond redemption (in Baghra’s mind - like too many people IRL, she seems to not understand what redemption actually is), blames her for the sea whip, for wanting to find the third amplifier.  She blames Alina for these things, but it is likely a mask for further personal guilt. Of all people, Baghra is likely the one who would have been most successful in stopping the Darkling before things took the path they did.  He trusted her.

But her nasty treatment of others obscures that Baghra is largely a passive character in the trilogy. Whether out of love or some variety of religious concern, she doesn’t try to kill her son.  She doesn’t remove Alina from the situation in a more final way, only tells her to run.  And in the end, she commits suicide rather than more directly confront the Darkling.

The Apparat

Okay, after all that, I don’t have near as much about the Apparat. *L*

If Baghra’s surface details are meant to evoke Baba Yaga, then I think the Apparat’s point to Rasputin.  His physical description was practically a caricature (if you’ve only seen the show, he looked far less revolting in that than he was described in the books) and he starts out as a trusted advisor to the Ravkan royal family.

One of the big questions about the Apparat is about what he truly believes.  He was in cahoots with the Darkling around the coup against the Lantsov dynasty in S&B, but he later swung his support behind the Sun Summoner.  I think it would be a believable reading of the text to suspect he may have planned to do so since learning of Alina’s existence.  There’s no real reason to think he truly supported the Darkling’s cause or cared much for Grisha themselves; on the latter point, I think the greater support is for the idea that he does not care about the Grisha and just used them to get what he wanted.  

His presentation is a mix of True Believer and power-seeker and a great deal of the questions around him relate to where one thinks he falls most strongly on that spectrum.  Alina’s interactions with him in S&B have the hallmarks of a fanatic, but then, these signs are also seen through Alina’s eyes and you have to consider whether she is seeing reality or a careful act.  I think the case could be made for either.   But either way, I also think he wanted power.  I suppose you could argue he wanted power on behalf of Sankta Alina, but I think his actions in R&R show that an Alina who wasn’t going to comply with his wishes was deemed more trouble than she was worth. If she had died, I don’t think he fundamentally would have cared.  She had established enough of a reputation, was known to enough people, that he could have exploited her as a martyr without having to deal with the reality.

The Apparat was the sort of character I tend to really dislike (religious manipulation, etc.).  Something that struck me in all the books is how more than one character was strangely...tolerant of him. He backstabbed people more than once and yet nothing was every truly done about it.

[peachcitt]

shadow and bone netflix series analysis

what up besties i said as a joke that i wanted to do an analysis post on the changes made in the s&b netflix series from the grishaverse books, and then i realized i wasn't joking and that i actually wanted to do that

it's finals season, i am an undergraduate english major, i have had about five hours of sleep within the past forty eight hours, and believe it or not i am doing this analysis as a fun reward for finishing a research paper. i am putting this out here for you so you can decide if these are the kinds of vibes you want right now.

structure of the analysis will be vaguely as follows:

changes made, in chronological order (or as best as chronology i can do under the circumstances and doing absolutely zero fact checking)

analysis of change when looking at the themes of the books which will include my personal feelings

personal theories (if any) derived from the change for the trajectory of the netflix series

so, like, long post warning. also spoiler warning for the netflix series as well as probably most, if not all, grishaverse books

now let's get this baby started

alina's appearance and shu heritage

so the series starts right off the bat acknowledging alina's shu appearance and the in-world racism and prejudice she's experienced because of it, which was not in the books. however i found alina's shu appearance to be completely in line with the book's themes. alina was already isolated at keramzin and the army because of her sickliness, and she's isolated at the little palace because of her power and her awkwardness. so purposefully making her shu was, i felt, a nice world-building decision as well as a new and interesting layer to her character. also, it's always nice to see diversity in media, so i have literally no qualms with this change

in terms of the rest of the series, the grishaverse is a very politically-motivated story. there's a lot of in-universe politics that happens in the shadow and bone trilogy and especially in the king of scars duology, and i think if the series chooses to extend into/include the king of scars duology story (which, i really hope it will), alina being shu (or at least part shu) will be very interesting to see considering king of scars and rule of wolves deal with negotiations and treaties with shu han. i think also having alina be shu and someone who has experienced countless amounts of in-world racism become a saint, seeing how she and the rest of ravka navigate her identity and identity politics will be really interesting. generally speaking, i just really hope the later parts of the series really delve into alina's identity, what it means to be a saint and also "look like the enemy," and the ravkan people's mixed feelings about her

alina's sickliness/childhood relationship with mal

in the books, alina is described as thin, always having trouble sleeping, hardly ever hungry, and sickly looking because, as we learn later, of her constantly unconsciously repressing her grisha abilities. this is part of the reason she's isolated at keramzin in the books; she's sickly and awkward and no one bothers with her except mal - because they're the same age and mal is strong enough to defend her from the older orphans at keramzin. however, the show doesn't really delve into the effects of what suppressing her abilities do to her except for a few offhand lines (alina angrily saying "im never that sick" when mal suggests she say she's stick to stop from going into the fold, mentions of her larger appetite when they're on the run in the woods). instead, the show kind of flips alina and mal's childhood personalities; mal is depicted as shy and easily picked on, and alina is the protector.

i'll just say it: this change fucks so hard. i love it. i think it says such wonderful things about their characters, and i like that alina begins the series as someone incapable of turning a blind eye to bullies and someone who cares very fiercely for the people she loves (not that that isn't the case in the books - i just think this change does a great job of looking directly at it in the way that shows have to). i think it's easy to root for her, and it's easy to see how she will become a saint to the people. in addition to that, i love what this is saying about alina and mal's characters and how they grow up; that separation from alina caused mal to have to face his own problems head on in traditionally masculine ways (because that was what ana kuya criticizes him in the show for; for always running from fights and being too soft, and i think it's really telling that our first view of mal as a kid, im pretty sure, is gingerly holding a bunny which portrays feminine caregiving and then we jump cut to mal fighting in a dirty boxing ring in the first army, something gritty and masculine). masculine ways that he had to be indoctrinated into and that may not actually be in his natural disposition.

meanwhile, separation from mal meant alina no longer had to be a dominant protector, and she does not connect with anyone in the first army as strongly as she connected with mal, so she doesn't really feel the need to be as aggressive as she was as a child. however, you can see that quiet protectiveness spark up at times - notably when people other than herself are picked on, such as at the food line when she claims not to know the others in the cartography unit so they don't get penalized along with her. i do wish, however, elements of her sickliness had been emphasized a little more in the show because of grisha theory, which i will talk about in another section.

first entry into the fold

okay i will be honest. this change is probably the one that scared me the most when seeing it in the trailers, and i am kind of still iffy on it now. in the books, alina's first journey into the fold and the inciting moment for the entire series is just luck and orders. everyone in the first army has to go through the fold at some point, and it just so happens to be alina and mal's time to go through. however, in the show alina is not initially assigned to go into the fold, but mal is, and alina goes out of her way to make sure that she gets on the skiff so that mal won't have to go alone/without her. there's this level of 'choice' (or at least the illusion of it) in the show in terms of alina and mal getting onto the skiff and going into the fold; at one point or the other they both try to tell the other not to get on the skiff and just choose something else.

the thing that irks me the most is alina's stubborn "i'll make it" line that she tells mal after she's on the skiff. it screams 'fantasy dystopian protagonist' (divergent is the first to come to mind for some reason) in a way that alina never comes across in the books. alina never chooses to make her life more difficult - she's always given two terrible options and has to take the option that fits with her morals or her perception of the power she needs to surivive and win the fight. but i know the only reason alina goes out of her way to get on the skiff is because she's separated from mal, which aligns nicely with the protective nature the show has inscribed on her.

the thing that redeems this change for me is that when alina tries to get just herself onto the skiff (by burning the maps to ensure that she has a purpose there), she ends up endangering the lives of her entire cartography unit. this keeps with the theme of a whole lot of alina's later decisions throughout the books affecting so many more people than just her, and i like that this is a lesson that she learns very early on. this change also seems to be a trade out for the final entering-the-fold scene, but i'll talk about that later.

alexei

here he is, the lynchpin himself. in the books, alexei is dry and rude in a funny way with alina, and they have this really great banter at the beginning of the novel, and then he's, like, the first to get carried off by volcra. very harrowing in the book, i loved it. in the show, alexei's character is a little (a lot) different - he's naive and blunt in a silly way, and he very obviously has a crush on alina. instead of being carried off by volcra in the show, though, he jumps off the skiff and runs blind into the fold - committing what we think at the time is an act of suicide - which was extremely harrowing to see in a completely different way, and i loved it. even if they changed alexei's personality i still love him (and his death) dearly

so as previously mentioned, alexei acts as the lynchpin between the six of crows plot and the shadow and bone plot; he manages to escape the fold alive, and makes it all the way to ketterdam to tell a select few people the legendary sun summoner is alive WHICH. okay ive just decided that's my next topic. anyway back to alexei.

his death in ketterdam is awful because of the personality change, which is why i don't mind missing bitchy alexei from the book; his hopeful little "if i tell you, you'll set me free?" that pulls at your heart and also tells you immediately that he is going to die as soon as he tells everyone what he say is done so well. i also like that through treatment of alexei, we get some characterization of the crows; inej immediately gives him water and glares at the mercher in quiet rage on his cruel treatment, kaz doesn't flinch when alexei is killed but inej and jesper do. i also thought it was interesting to have the mercher (dreeson was his name i believe) to be the one to get his hands 'dirty' and actually be the one to shoot alexei because in six of crows, there is always the sense that the merchers are cruel and conniving, but that they very carefully keep the death of the poor and the grisha off their own hands. im wondering if this hands-on killing is a dreeson-specific trait, or if this more hands-on cruelty will be explored more in other mercher characters we meet, like van eck.

sun summoner legend

this change is so?? i don't really know what to think of it. narratively, it makes sense in the show to have this legend be in place so that alina's importance is immediately recognized by people across the different countries.

however in the books, no one really expected alina. her presence wasn't foretold or divine (at first) or fate in any way. she became a saint because i think in part people weren't expecting her, and once they saw what she could do, they wanted to believe in her abilities so bad they made her divine. this change was also weird to me having just finished rule of wolves where zoya (i think) reflects on amazing things that have happened throughout the story and she notes that alina was not some sort of legend that people were expecting - none of what happened was. everything that happened from alina to nina's miracles in king of scars to zoya's expanded abilities by the end of rule of wolves to the "age of saints." all of those things were just chance people being in chance situations that all slid together in a strange, amazing coincidence. they got lucky.

and i think, at the center of the books, is this kind of purposeful disillusionment of the saints and religion, what with the main character of the original trilogy literally becoming a saint and yet never truly feeling saint-ly or being perfectly divine. the sun summoner legend the show brings up seems to depart from this. it'll be interesting to see what the show does with the legend and how alina feels about it as she fulfills it, and im honestly hoping that we'll find out later in the series that the legend was actually just some poor guy a few hundred years ago making something up to give people hope.

the crows timeline/characterization

in the books, the six of crowd ice court heist happens three years after the events of the final book of the shadow and bone trilogy. but obviously the timelines are smushed together for the show to create a new and different direction for their story and also, as we see at the end of the season, a new and different direction for alina's story as well

ive also seen bardugo say that because of the converging time lines, the grishaverse story will not take seven seasons (one season per book in the grishaverse) to get through. for this reason, im thinking that the parem story/ice court heist will begin if/when we get season 2. given that parem is a big part of kos/row, i see a crows and nikolai interaction happening in season 2 that sparks a beginning discussion on parem.

but back to the crows characterization! the crows are completely in character for me in almost every way, and i found the interactions between kaz, inej, and jesper to be very in character. however kaz's plan to capture alina doesn't work out almost at all which is something that he definitely wouldn't have let happen in the books. im chalking this up to the converging timelines - these crows are baby crows. they're young, a little less experienced, and they haven't gotten their groove on heists (and they don't have the rest of their crew) yet. but i anticipate seeing more crows-classic successful heists in season 2.

there are a couple of things i want to talk about each crow, so it's subtopic time

nina and matthias

perfect. their interactions were almost always word-for-word from the book. i can't remember if matthias had actually been the one to actually catch nina in the book, but if not, then it was a nice touch. it was interesting to see that both of them were so willing to be traitors of their country for each other in the show, because even when they're in a romantic relationship outside of fjerda and ravka in the book, they struggle with even the idea of betraying their country.

i like how they changed nina and matthias' "escape" from fjerda to ravka, and how nina explicitly betrayed grisha she knew to their faces. im interested to see how they'll integrate her back into the second army, or if they even will do that. also, i like that fedyor slowed matthias' heart to make him pass out before he sees the other grisha, so it was easy to understand how matthias could've thought it was nina deceiving him all along. their confrontation in the boat was (chef's kiss), and the horror on nina's face as she realized that this situation she put him in won't be as easily solvable as she thought was just wonderful.

jesper

perfect. i love him. and the coy little hints that he's a fabrikator were so good. also the line in the very beginning where he asks for a demo man, which foreshadows wylan was very nice. the only thing out of character is one time kaz asks him to be a distraction and show jesper claims that being a handsome distraction is not part of his talents. it literally is, why did they make him lie.

inej

literally so so good. i love that we meet her while she still has her oath not to take lives; we get to see her develop and learn that sometimes death is necessary, but that she still isn't yet comfortable with killing. on some level, she never will be, and i think that was a perfect place to start her character. however, i am confused about the show giving her a brother. where is he. is he going to be important?? why is he here???? i can't even make any solid predictions about him because inej having a brother came straight out of fucking left field. here's one flimsy prediction based on nothing at all: inej's brother is grisha and is an indentured servant. may also be involved in the parem plot, or works at the white rose where nina will befriend him and connect with the rest of the six because of him. who fucking knows

kaz

i already kind of went over their disaster plan that still somehow worked out for him, but i love literally everything else they did with kaz. the refusal to show his bare hands was literally art!! we got that tease in the first episode and the camera pans up as soon as the gloves come off. that was perfection - as well as the intimacy and trust portrayed between kaz and inej without them ever touching. i also loved the hints and nudges for his story with pekka - the way he always says his name with obvious distaste, and when we see him interact with pekka for the first time on screen. how he asks if they've ever made a deal before and pekka just goes "nah" and kaz just glares at him. perfect. and i also think the show really leaned in to the soft parts of kaz that inej sees in him, especially when he basically said she (and jesper) meant more to him than any saint?? oh my GOD. i kind of like this honest departure from kaz's book "greed is my god edgy edgy blah blah" especially when he's afraid he'll lose inej. i also think it'd be funny if we hear kaz say "greed is my god" and be edgy about it with us AND inej knowing that is superficial because of what he told her. that would be hilarious.

pekka, tante heleen, per haskell

these three aren't part of the six, but they are part of the original six of crows story and i still wanted to talk about my opinions on them, so they're going here.

i fucking loved pekka, how ruthless he was, and his irish accent. that was wonderful. because of how fucking hands-on and brutal he was, though, i wonder if they're going to keep the jakob hertzoon piece of kaz's origin story the same, because this pekka was so good at being violent that it was hard to picture him even pretending to be a benevolent benefactor to orphans. he is a dilf, though. i am not afraid to admit that.

my only problem with tante heleen is that her actress looked too nice. like she might bake me cookies and offer me a ride home from school. total milf as well but not in the scary sexy way that she was in the books. she had smile lines, she was so dainty, she seemed so genuine. i want to see her be a little more cruel.

per haskell, the actual gang leader of the crows, is not in the show at all. it seems as though the show made kaz the official boss of the crows while he is only second in command in the book. this makes me wonder how they'll handle or if they'll even include that fucking awesome scene in crooked kingdom of kaz earning the gang's trust over haskell. it would be weird to introduce per haskell in season 2 when he wasn't even mentioned in season 1, but it wouldn't be altogether terrible considering the crows spent very little time in ketterdam this season. however, this makes me wonder if, when kaz was away on his little saint pilgrimage (i am calling it that specifically because i know it would piss him off) someone else stepped in as "boss" of the crows. in the show, kaz also leverages the deed of the crow club in order to be able to take inej with him, and presumably the jewels alina gives him will solve that problem, but what would happen if any of the crows find out he made that deal? would he still have to earn the gang's trust back in a show of power and respect like in crooked kingdom? much to think about.

mal

back to the shadow and bone story, ive already briefly (not really briefly) gone over mal characterization alongside alina, but i want to mention how the show includes his perspective alongside alina's and how important that is. the shadow and bone trilogy is told entirely from alina's perspective, and alina is in some ways an unreliable narrator. she tends to think of her relationships and feelings as one sided unless her friend/love interest is looking her in the eye and telling her exactly how they feel about her. the one exception is genya, and that sort of bites her in the ass until it doesn't, but i digress. the point is, the only mal perspective we get in the books is alina's perception of mal, and the bonus content of the "lost" letter he'd written to her while looking for the stag in fjerda. granted, that letter says a lot about mal and how he feels about alina, so if you didn't take the time to read the letter when reading the book, chances are you weren't so hot on mal unless you have sexy critical reading skills like me (or just really love the childhood best friends to lovers trope).

getting all the gritty, messy details of how hard mal is trying to get back to alina in the show makes him so much more of a sympathetic character than he may have seemed at first glance for the majority of shadow and bone from alina's perspective. the show really stresses that the bond alina and mal have is mutual and powerful, and i think that's fucking perfect, actually.

this point was really driven home during the episode we see that mal has a matching scar on his palm that is related to alina, just like how alina has a mal-related scar on her palm. that scene in the brig was so good, especially when they ask each other what they're in for, and alina says "the usual," and after a pause, mal replies "the usual" as well. he could be lying because he knows she would feel bad if she was the reason he chose to stir trouble to go to the brig, but he could also be saying that he usually actively chooses to be sent to the brig for defending alina or because alina is usually already there and he wants to be with her. knowing that and then seeing alina have the scar on her palm erased was. fucking devastating (in a good-ish way), and im kind of hoping alina either chooses to have the tailoring removed so she can see the scar again or injures her hand in a mal-related injury so they can match again :(

i have more to say about mal, but i'll save it for the grisha theory/amplifier section

the darkling

overall, darkling portrayal was very spot on, but i didn't really like how he just. gave alina his name so early on. in the books im quite certain he doesn't give alina his first name until the third book? regardless, he doesn't give it to her until they've fought and been enemies for a while. theoretically, kirigan giving his real name to alina so early could be a manipulation tactic (like his moments of 'vulnerability' and 'weakness' with alina in the book), especially because we lose that 'heart to heart' by the campfire after the darkling rescues alina from the fjerdans where alina first starts to see the darkling as human.

i also thought it was interesting that alina kisses kirigan first - in the books they're actually having a serious discussion (i can't remember what about, but when she realizes the darkling is Not Good, she remembers the first time they kissed as a thing he possibly did to distract her from thinking her own thoughts), and the darkling interrupts her with a kiss sexy enough for her to forget what's going on. the show however chooses to do a girlboss she-can-move-on-if-she-wants-to moment which is pretty cool and let's be honest, if you like men and ben barnes is right in front of you giving you Sexy Eyes a whole lot, you are going to want to kiss him. that scene where they get interrupted during a steamy kiss, and they laugh and kirigan leaves the frame just to rush back for one last kiss? that nearly fucking converted me. that was really sweet actually. the show does a fantastic job of showing how captivating kirigan's interest can be.

last note about the kirigan for this section - isn't kirigan the name of the guy who owns the guilded bog for nikolai in kos/row? i can't be sure because i don't have my book with me and i refuse to look up information when i have gone this entire post without looking anything up, but if his name isn't kirigan it's pretty fucking close. i don't know what that means, but i don't think bardugo is the type to name characters similar names for no reason. we'll know for sure if/when the guilded bog is introduced.

zoya

most of zoya's portrayal is really in line with her character and her development throughout the shadow and bone trilogy as well as king of scars and rule of wolves. i think the show did a great job of showing how zoya was in the darkling/kirigan's favor for a while before alina arrived and how she resents alina at first for causing her to not be the darkling's favorite anymore. in addition to that, knowing we find out she is part suli in row makes her casting so much better, and i like that we get to see a little more of her personality in the show than we do in the book shadow and bone. of course we see more of her in siege and storm/ruin and rising, but it's nice to have her become a sympathetic character through the knowledge that she has family in novokribirsk and that she purposefully mans skiffs to see them before she fully sides with alina.

the one thing that made me. just confused was zoya calling alina a "half-breed" at the little palace?? it was so out of place (that particular part of the insult; im pretty sure the other thing she said was very much exactly what she said in the book. some insult about orphans i think), especially knowing that zoya herself is a "half-breed," so that didn't make sense to me.

however, i was glad to see alina immediately embrace zoya as an ally - because she knows from the start of zoya's alliance that she had family that kirigan killed. in the books, alina's parentage is not at all important, and their deaths are never specified to matter, but the show points out from the very beginning that alina's parents were swallowed by the fold. i think this makes alina's immediate compassion and forgiveness of zoya make sense, and it was also very sweet and a little funny to see alina pull zoya into a hug that she so obviously does not expect or want to express as something she wants. it was perfect.

east vs west ravka civil war

i don't have much to say about this except it makes kirigan's actions at the fold seem a little better. not great, not by any means, but knowing that the leader of a growing coup was right on the other side really cements in the idea that kirigan is doing this for what he thinks is the greater good of ravka. im pretty sure in the original trilogy, there was also some tension between east and west ravka, but none of it comes to a head until the events of kos/row. great set up for future ravkan tensions in future seasons.

david and genya & fedyor and ivan

before we get into the last meat and potatoes of this post, i want to talk about love because it's a little bit of a break. take this time to stop reading, stretch, relax your jaw, straighten your back, drink water, etc. you've been here a while. you deserve it

okay so first fedyor and ivan. in the books, fedyor and ivan are just bros (i don't even remember them ever really interacting?) but in the show it is heavily implied they are dating. this is so funny to me, and i love it so much. especially because ivan was in a het relationship with marie in the books (but because the show kills marie off before she dies in the books, obviously that is not happening), so they really just decided that ivan and fedyor were gay for seemingly no reason. except i think ivan died on the skiff during the final battle in the show which is kind of a bummer because he lives through to ruin and rising and has an... interesting arc. fedyor, i think, dies in the battle of the little palace in siege and storm, but i wonder what they'll do with this relationship in next seasons. maybe fedyor will take ivan's place as grieving boyfriend with ptsd, but im not sure. i honestly don't even know for certain if ivan dies in the show, so we'll see.

as for genya and david, i would just like to point out the little hints of mutual affection. in the books, it's kind of implied that genya had feelings for david first and he didn't realize his own feelings until after she's scarred by the darkling, but in the show we see david actually looking at genya during the winter fete! like looking, appreciating the view! i loved the show choosing to include that small amount of mutuality, and after finishing rule of wolves it definitely made me feel some type of way. david and genya. i love them, they're perfect.

grisha theory/amplifiers

we're nearing the final stretch in this post, however, i have a lot to say about grisha theory and amplifiers, and i also have a lot to say for the battle of the fold so this "final stretch" will probably be. a very long stretch.

so obviously because of the nature of books and narrative writing, there was a lot of space within the shadow and bone book to go over the grisha theory alina was learning at her time in the little palace in great detail, however in the show we hardly even get any grisha theory at all. the little we get is actually from the apparat. im not sure if we get anything from bhagra. i don't even think we get the phrase "like calls to like" which is the most basic piece of grisha theory throughout the entire grishaverse.

i am definitely. bitter about this. i obviously didn't want huge long meditations on grisha theory in the show, but pretty much the whole time alina was at the little palace, i felt like she had so much time free time to wander around the palace, hang out with nadia and marie, daydream about mal and kirigan. don't get me wrong - those are all valuable activities - but i feel like it missed the point of alina's time at the little palace. she felt isolated there; yes, she had nadia and marie, but she couldn't share with them everything she was going through because she didn't want anyone to truly know how difficult mastering her abilities were. and because she was so isolated, she throws herself into grisha theory, especially during the times in which she can't summon her abilities by herself. this is when she learns about why she's been so sickly her whole life (because she has not used her abilities, and grisha derive some form of life force and energy from using their abilities), all about amplifies, and other really cool world-building for grisha abilities and culture. instead, it was difficult to tell (at least for me) in the show if the palace and the little palace were even different places while in the books the little palace was such a whimsical, ancient, and magical place for alina compared to the gaudiness of the main palace.

the collar

anyway, complaints about architecture and alina's subpar theory education aside, the little bit of grisha theory we get is from the apparat when he talks about ilya morozova and the three amplifiers he was attempting to make during his lifetime. when the apparat is describing amplifiers, it almost seems like amplifers - not just morozova's inventions - are super rare in the world of the show. amplifiers are relatively rare in the books, obtained by only some of the most powerful grisha (zoya, ivan, alina), but they still exist. from what we've seen of zoya and ivan, they didn't seem to have amplifiers on their person, so it looks like alina is unique not only in getting an amplifier from one of morozova's beasts, but also in just getting an amplifier in general, which is a little weird.

EDIT: thanks to @laelipoo for pointing out that zoya is actually shown to have what looks like a tiger’s tooth embedded in the skin of her wrist in the first episode! so okay this shows that powerful grisha still have amplifiers in the world of the show, but this probably suggests that instead of being pieces of jewelry like in the books, they act more as body modifications, which is really interesting. if im not mistaken, ivan’s amplifier is a necklace in the book, so maybe his show-amplifier would’ve been embedded in the skin of his chest. regardless, i’d still like to see more discussion on how amplifiers in the show work - which, now that we know zoya most probably has an amplifier, we might get to see with her becoming more prevalent of a character in the projected arcs of the show (both shadow and bone trilogy as well as kos/row)

i can't remember if morozova was ever referred to as "the bonesmith" (i feel like he has been, but not in the way the apparat refers to him in the show), but i feel as though that was a kind of. foreshadowing for how we would see the stag amplifier work later in the show. in the book, the stag's antlers are a literal collar around alina's neck that remains there until she loses her abilities, so the metaphor of being "owned" by the darkling is definitely there. it never stops being there until she loses the ability that makes her his mirror and his tool. however, in the show we definitely. do not get that.

so i've seen some people say that they hate the design of the stag collar, and i cannot say i was a huge fan of looking at it myself. but that just really cemented in the fact that kirigan forcing the collar on her is a complete violation of her body and her agency. the fact that the bones erupt from her skin and that her skin looks irritated where the bones puncture through her skin just reinforces the idea that this fusion is not natural and is not supposed to be pretty because kirigan taking control of her in this way is really really terrible actually. in addition to the collar, the show also gives kirigan a circle of bone embedded in his hand - which, hand versus collar, who has the most agency in this situation, his hand is quite literally around her neck, etc - but i feel like they made this change so that non-readers could see and understand the mutuality of the amplifier in a physical manifestation because the show doesn't expand on that theory at all.

i really liked that the show kept the reason for alina gaining control of the amplifier being her connection with the stag before kirigan killed it because that at least is consistent with the theory in the books, especially with the expansion of that same theory in kos/row with zoya's connection with juris and how true use of an amplifier requires mutual connection, understanding, and suffering between the grisha and the animal.

i also thought that the way the show portrayed alina taking back control of her power with the stag's horns absorbing into her own bones was a really effective way to show that the power is hers now, and that it is a part of her. however, i wish the show had kept some evidence of the collar because of how it quickly became a piece of her iconography in the books as well as a symbol of her power. seeing as how alina stabbed the circle of bone out of kirigan's hand (very sexy girlboss moment), i wonder if kirigan will still be able to control her abilities. if he can, i hope that any time he uses her abilities, the horns emerge from her skin again as a visual signifier that alina is being violated and that her own power is being used against her. OR even at the times in which alina uses kirigan's power against him (like if the show depicts the conclusion to the battle of the little palace where alina uses the darkling's merzost) to have the horns come out of her skin to show that she is reinforcing her bond with him. both would be really cool.

alina and mal

okay so in ruin and rising we learn that not only are alina and mal bffs and in love whatever, but also that they've been drawn to each other because mal is actually the host to the last of morozova's amplifiers. and then alina looks back at the times in which she's felt the most powerful or when they encountered morozova's beasts, and she realizes that all of those times coincide with when she had important moments with mal. this reveal is huge in the series, and without the build up, i fear it might seem like it would've come out of nowhere if the show chooses to go in the same direction.

for example, alina and mal in the book only find the stag after they kiss for the first time. however, in the show they don't kiss. they don't even move mal's "i see you now" speech to right before they find the stag. it's simply a jump cut to alina and mal in the forest looking at the stag. they might be talking, but i don't think it was an 'important' moment for them.

however, they've been setting mal up as a better-than-average tracker since the very beginning with ana kuya asking him specifically to hunt for dinner. mal also admits that when he saw alina's power come from the tent when kirigan is testing her power that he heard a 'high-pitched tone' and somehow intuitively knew that it was her or something like that. he also tells alina that he'll always be able to find his way to her, no matter what, which is really romantic of course, but it is also part of their connection as one of morozova's three amplifiers and the girl who will possess at one point in time two of the three amplifiers.

i also think that the scene in ruin and rising when alina kills mal for his power is supposed to directly mirror the scene in the shadow and bone book where alina tells mal before they find the stag that she wants him to kill her before she can be caught by the darkling; part of the reason she feels strongly enough to ask this is because she understands grisha theory enough to know what the darkling's plans for the stag and her are. when she's protecting mal and the stag from the darkling, she begs mal to kill her. but he doesn't. and in ruin and rising, when they're out of options during the final battle, mal tells alina to kill him. and she does.

but without alina asking to be killed paired alongside the lack of intimate mal and alina moment before they find the stag, i wonder if the show will be heading in the same direction as the books in terms of mal's status as the last of morozova's creations, or if they'll decide to do something different.

battle of the fold

i think the most obvious difference in the battle of the fold is that kaz, inej, and jesper are like. just chillin on the skiff. additionally, zoya is on the skiff (her presence there was discussed in the zoya section), and mal is not a prisoner in the skiff like he was in the book - he snuck on. for the six's presence on the skiff, i don't mind it and i actually like how they participate in the battle (inej throwing a knife into kirigan's chest and nearly ending his shit right then and there was something we always wanted but did not know we wanted. same with zoya and inej bonding during a fight), but the change in mal's freedom status on the ship is a little more complicated.

in the books, the darkling lets alina and mal spend one last night together (with bars between them) before whatever happens on the fold. i can't remember if he tells alina that he plans to execute mal in the fold, but regardless it becomes apparent that is his plan when he throws mal overboard, on the edges of alina's sunlight, and begins reigning in the sunlight so that mal will be consumed by the fold. it's the fact that mal is in danger that alina manages to gain control of her power once more, and she saves mal. the group of dignitaries from the various nations are still on the ship when she makes her escape, and she uses the Cut - a form of summoner ability that she has never used before and has only ever been used by the darkling. she makes the terrible and difficult decision to let the dignitaries die in the fold alongside the darkling, because she believes it's a worthy sacrifice to make, and she and mal escape together.

i think this sequence of events would've tracked really well in the show with how alina had previously been depicted as mal's protector, but the show chooses not to have alina save mal and kill the dignitaries. instead, the show has kirigan kill the dignitaries and also has mal have a homoerotic fist fight with kirigan which is. not exactly not in line with themes the show has put on, especially with how mal and kirigan have interacted before in the show.

in the books, we don't see mal and the darkling interact without alina as a buffer, and so a fistfight between them in the battle of the fold in shadow and bone wouldn't have made narrative sense and would've just ended up feeling cheap. however we do see mal and kirigan interact without alina in the show - when mal is showing kirigan where the stag is and kirigan learns alina's favorite flower through mal, and when kirigan gives mal that petty little speech about how he'll get alina eventually while mal grows old and dies.

there's an interesting phenomenon in certain kinds of love triangles; most of the time you see love triangles in the classic sense of Person B and Person C both being in love with Person A, who has to make the choice between B and C. however, that's not a true love triangle - there also needs to be a connecting factor between B and C. and, in most cases, that connecting factor is the ritual of masculine homosocial rivalry. so when applying this kind of love triangle to alina, mal, and kirigan, we see that both mal and kirigan have feelings for alina, but they also have a connection to each other through their rivalry, which is as much about rituals of masculine conquering (whether the person they are wanting to conquer is alina or the other man is a very interesting question to which the answer is yes) as it is about being the person alina loves.

do i personally like the kirigan/mal fight in the fold? no, i would've much preferred to see alina rescue and protect mal. however, i do recognize that the fight makes narrative sense within the show, and it was really funny to see kirigan get his shit rocked by mal's bare fists a couple of times. i would say i hope he's been humbled by the experience but we all know that's not true.

also remember when i mentioned that kirigan is the one who kills the dignitaries here instead of alina leaving them to die? and remember, way back in the beginning when i said that alina inadvertently getting her cartography unit killed in the show may have been a swap for some deaths in the battle of the fold? alina being excused from the deaths of the dignitaries in the show but responsible for the deaths of her cartography friends at the beginning is what i was talking about. like i said way back (or maybe i didn't say it but im saying it now), it makes narrative sense. i get it.

however, i think the choice not to have alina perform the Cut on the skiff when she regains control of her power is an interesting one. because, in the book, that was an ultimate show-off of power (even if it was a terrible moment for alina). no one else but the darkling can perform a Cut, and as soon as alina forcibly takes control of her power from the darkling she uses his own signature move to leave him for death? that's a power move. that's irony. that's a physical manifestation of alina being able to adopt and take advantage of some of the darkling's power and use it against him, which is definitely a main theme in the book as it happens every single time alina gets close to defeating him and also when she actually defeats him.

so the Cut is really important, and i want to see in what other situation the show might have alina perform a Cut of her own against kirigan, or if they'll even include that aspect of reclaiming of power. i really want them to.

conclusion

so what have we learned? i think, first and foremost, we have learned that i have so many opinions and should learn how to be sweet and concise with my words. we have also learned there were a lot of changes between the grishaverse books and the series, and these were only the changes that i remembered off the top of my head having watched the series almost a week ago and having reread the books over the past few months.

in addition to those things, we have learned that, in my academic opinion, many of the changes made to fit the story into the screen were positive changes or, at the very least, changes i am interested in seeing develop. in the end, i am just a fan, and regardless of what season 2 may throw at us, i trust bardugo's decisions because she has never let me down narratively before, so i'll probably end up loving things the show ends up doing because i am, at my core, a simple sort of person.

i had a lot of fun writing this all up, and i hope this super long post was informative or entertaining in some way. thank you so much for reading<3<3<3<3

[stromuprisahat]

Do you think Leigh Bardugo planned to write the King of Scars duology? At first I thought so, because of Nikolai's scars from the Merzost. But given how the duology is ultimately written, I don't think so at all. I also have the impression that all the characters are the spokespersons there to remind how horrible the Darkling is, which is objectively ridiculous. She even went so far as to tell Alina that Nikolaï, Zoya and the others are trying to repair the damage caused by his wars with him... Whereas the Darkling barely caused a civil war in the original trilogy, and no has nothing to do with the wars against Shu Han and Fjerda. So what is this shit dialogue?! What plural wars has the Darkling caused?! Why is he held responsible for Genya's rape?! Why do we demonize the creation of the little palace?! Why would the Darkling tell Zoya "you and I are going to change the world" as a manipulation technique?! What fucking use?! Why are the characters like, "Let him be the hero or not?" in the end, whereas if he doesn't sacrifice himself EVERYONE DIES?! This duology is such an absurd demonization of the character that it gives me a headache...

I think she planned it the same way it usually looks she does. She has some nice ideas, puts them together as she goes, and doesn't much deal with implications. What's sad is that neither does her editor, whose job should be to poke and prod.

I've read the books as soon as they were out, so my memory hopefully isn't the best, but:

Yes for author's mouthpieces. Especially poor Genya got reduced into just that and a victim. Then there are the bigot twins or Zoya, especially her famous Darkling's crimes speech.

“That’s the moment? Not in manipulating a young girl and trying to steal her power, or destroying half a city of innocent people, or decimating the Grisha, or blinding your own mother? None of those moments feel like an opportunity for self-examination?”

Rule of Wolves- Chapter 9

I'm pretty sure I've encountered antis with the very same list.

Alina's just heartbreaking in case you survived her epilogue in R&R unscathed. What we see resembles an empty shell taught equally empty phrases to repeat in public. When viewed through reader's lenses, it's just another mouthpiece, paraded around to remind us Alina had it all coming and the Darkling bad (in case you haven't caught onto that yet).

“No. But every child I help heals something inside me, every chance I have to tend to someone left in the wake of your wars. And maybe when our country is free, then that wound will close.”

Rule of Wolves- Chapter 14

What I find hilarious, is how the Righteous Gang™ dealt with their neighbouring countries. They tricked Shu Han into signing a treaty about peace and alliance... only to have it broken in the very same book. They won a war with Fjerda in a single battle, because Zoya threw their strategy to the wind, but appeared soon enough to be proclaimed Saint for being a dragon or something?!

Sorry, but LB's idea of how politics, religion and warfare work is beyond ridiculous.

The Darkling's obviously responsible for Genya's rape, because he's been micromanaging late King, which is why his Coup went so smoothly... and we can't have the reader question how fair has been the late Tsar's punishment, how well it prevented repetition of his crimes, or if getting rid of him in the first place might've prevented his reappearance and role in challenge to Nikolai's legitimacy.

Little Palace needs to be discredited, so we don't question The Gang's decision to abolish the law that takes children from their loving families. Don't. Just don't delve into it. There's no point.

I've read pretty good explanation of that catch up line. Zoya's often lying. If Alina's an unreliable narrator, due to her damaging upbringing and prejudice, Zoya's simply happier to see the world as she pleases. She's consciously choosing delusion. Alina might have mentioned what the Darkling told her, and Zoya's always been his special girl, right?! Even current regime's propaganda calls her the Darkling's favourite...

The only BUT I see is that for some reason, Aleksander uses the very same sentence on one of his Starless minions. Then again, that Aleksander has no fucks left to give, and even he suffered Zoya-praising disease, so excuse me, when I don't trust the author with her own characters and keeping them IN CHARACTER.

The ending is a mix of absurdity and heartless cruelty. The Darkling's constantly called monster, accused of NOT caring about the damage he causes... but reading the last few chapters made me despise the author's Coolest Female Trinity beyond measure.

I've delved into this somewhere already, but what I appreciate in real people and fictional characters alike, is kindness. Not blind or endless, but kindness. Having a bunch of "children", who barely lived a few decades, condemn a person to eternity of suffering, is beyond detestable. I might understand they all feel wronged by him (I don't.), but they all also owe him pretty much. And they're in no position to judge him.

If such short and relatively easy lives made them this unsympathetic, he should've been congratulated for hanging on so well.

It also wouldn't do any harm to cut about a quarter of those books, including the obvious fanservice.

[grishaversecommunityyy]

The Grishaverse Ship Survey Results

So! After all of that, we finally have the results! What is the general opinion on the ships in the Grishaverse? Well, that’s for you to read below! It’s actually pretty interesting and, while some parts make sense, there were definitely some parts which... surprised me... Anyway, onto the results!

Everything in this post can be split into:

The Grisha Trilogy

Six Of Crows Duology

The Nikolai Series

Shadow and Bone: TV Series

Most Enjoyed Ships

Least Enjoyed Ships

Crack Ships and Shipping Discourse

Notes from the Survey 

(note from mod emily: i tried to bold all of fritz’ comments, but i might have missed a few! be aware there are two of us analysing here :))

The Grisha Trilogy

The first book series we asked about was, of course, the first chronologically: the Grisha Trilogy. The most popular ship, with 83% voters for this series selecting this, was Genya/David (Fritz was glad to hear that; Yes I am). This is likely due to the lack of alternate romantic interests in the series, which seems to be a major issue for Alina’s ships. It also seems to be one genuinely enjoyed by most fans, in contrast to Darkling/Alina and Mal/Alina (each around 30%) and Nikolai/Alina (just under 20%), for which I have definitely seen plenty of debate. The second and third most popular ships for this series were Tamar/Nadia (55%) and Nikolai/Zoya (47%). Interestingly, Genya/Alina (43%) and Zoya/Alina (30%) ranked surprisingly high, especially considering how few of my friends and associates I hear talking about them. Good for them!

Honourable mentions:

Alina/Sun (no doubt inspired by that crack fic I wrote a while back) (Still havent read that out of fear)

Alina alone (a common concept among those surveyed, though most mentioned it later)

Zoya/Genya or Alina/Zoya/Genya

Six Of Crows Duology

This series was a little less divided, I would say. Predictably, Kaz/Inej came out on top with a whopping 96% of voters (:relieved:), with Wylan/Jesper next (90%) and Nina/Matthias just after (83%). None of the others really came close, despite Nina/Inej gathering 35% of the votes and Colm/Aditi at 25% (yeah, I’m not sure why that was so popular on AO3 either, but nobody really has objections so I assume that’s why it amassed so many votes). As Six of Crows is decidedly less divisive about ships and doesn’t have such controversial ships (more on that later), it seems the fandom agrees with canon pairings and the votes are... pretty unanimous.

Honourable Mentions:

Jesper/Wylan/Kuwei

Polycrows (platonic or romantic)

Kaz/Inej/Nina

Whoever didn’t read the instruction about this being for only the book series and put Jesper/Milo. I will never escape. 

The Nikolai Series

This one is a little harder for me because I actually haven’t read this... so over to Fritz for analysis! But first, the stats. At 85%, the most popular ship is Genya/David, followed by Zoya/Nikolai at 77%. Tamar/Nadia and Nina/Hanne draw at 61.5% and Nina/Matthias has 56% voters onboard. There’s no real honourable mentions for this one, sadly. Hello Fritz here! Read the books and very glad to see Genya/David as the top ship as it damn well should. Although still a bit surprising since its more of a side-arc of the two and only ties in with the importance of the story at a specific chapter that I feel like I don’t need to elaborate about, if you read Rule of Wolves. (I believe the popularity of the ship also sky-rocketed due to ROW) Following of course Zoya/Nikolai, the high ranking makes sense, it is the main ship and lets be honest they deserve it <3

I think the only really surprising thing about this is the high votes for Nina/Matthias since [SPOILERS CROOKED KINGDOM] he’s dead so I feel like people should move on from that. Nina/“Hanne” having not as high a ranking as I would’ve thought, but with Matthias still being in the frame I guess we shouldn’t be surprised either.

Shadow and Bone: TV Series

This one is really interesting, with the exclusive show watchers now taking part! We have 89% voting for Kaz/Inej, 76% for David/Genya, 71% for Matthias/Nina, 67% for Ivan/Fedyor (that’s a thing???-->Yeah they had a few somewhat sweet interactions in the background-->nvm i watched it you’re right fritz) and 62% for Mal/Alina. What’s really surprising is how high Malina is compared to Darklina, with Darkling/Alina at 36%. Who knows, maybe Fritz’ analysis can shed some light on this?

Yes yes Fritz to the rescue: First of all we have to see their interactions a little different from what we already knew of them by the end of episode 8. I still think it is a surprising number, since the Darkling in the show isn’t as nasty as he was in the books BUT over all his actions are now seen on TV. We all thought the deer antlers were a necklace amirite? Well no apparently not, the darkling used the worst kind of small science to fit Alinas collarbone to the bone and out comes a gruesome sight: a reason why many people might have started thinking: Wow what a disgusting person he is. And on the Malina “ship”: Mal finally has personality!! jkjk :eyes: Mals and Alinas friendship has been portrayed way better in the show and I believe that the people noticed more chemistry between them especially by the end of season 1. So I’m still a little surprised Darklina has such a low ranking (what with him being all sweet and cuddly in the middle of the show) but it makes sense and the Malina ship as well. Their vibes are just *chefs kiss* and thats coming from someone who didnt even like any of these “ships” <3

Loving the quotation marks for the word ‘ships’, Fritz. Over to the honourable mentions!

Honourable Mentions:

Jesper and Milo (isn’t milo a goat? guys, why?)

Nadia/Marie (huh that didn’t appear anywhere else)

One person had several - Kaz/Inej/Jesper, Dubrov/Mikhael, Dubrov/Mikhael/Mal - and yeah, you can really see the show differences in these mentions right? (whose dubrov...and whose mikhael...)

16% actually voted for Inej/Alina which is wild to me because of book context (they did have chemistry in the show tho :cowboi_smirk:)

Another person with several! We have Nina/Inej, Genya/Alina, Zoya/Alina, Zoya/Genya/Alina. Very sapphic. Good for you.

Kaz/Jesper and Nina/Inej all in one

That’s a lot of honour and mentions but it’s so interesting to me and I think you should see too

Most Enjoyed Ships

The most enjoyed ship was Kaz/Inej. This had unparalleled support, being at 35%. Jesper/Wylan, which was next on the list (23.5%) and Nina/Matthias (18%) were also pretty popular. Most of the others were quite low, though interestingly Mal/Alina only had 1 vote (plus one for the show version). Overall, the SoC ships were a lot more popular in this section, which makes sense - this part is really about your favourite ship, and those were more unanimous in the last sections.

Least Enjoyed Ships

Most people said Darkling/Alina, which got 47% of the NOTP votes. A lot more people disliked Darkling/Alina than liked Kaz/Inej. Make of that what you will, but I take it as a somewhat general agreement among many of you guys. Mal/Alina was also strongly disliked at 22%, but around a half or more of these were clarified to be about the book version of the ship specifically. They really must’ve upgraded in the show! Jesper/Kuwei and any other Darkling ships were also voted by a few, but all of these pale in comparison to the anti-Darklina votes. Shoutout to the person who said Apparat/Anyone. I agree, though it’s not something I thought of before seeing this response. Also one person said they didn’t like the poly ships, which I hope meant just the ones mentioned earlier and not all poly relationships in general... Another shoutout to whoever said Kaz/Heleen, because why did I have to read that. A fun question, all in all!

Crack Ships and Shipping Discourse

I love talking about crack ships, so let’s start with that! This time, I really don’t want to have to count and list because... well, let me show you:

I think that sums up the sheer variety, to be honest. Then again, it would be rude not to mention that the most popular were Jesper/Milo, Darkling/Nikolai and Alina/Sun. (If you’re still confused about that last one, I take full responsibility.)

YES KAZ/KRUGE I SUPPORT!!!

Honourable mention to this:

which was a lot to take in, and:

Now for the discourse. Yep, the part you probably came for. 

Actually... maybe you didn’t? Looking at all of these responses, I see a lot of people genuinely don’t care about ship wars and so on, and often enjoyed the books regardless of the romances involved. Quite a few disapproved of the ongoing (though small) wars between Darklina and Malina, and others had a similar line of thinking, saying we should maybe stop focusing so much on it. You guys are right. I know this is a ship survey, and the conclusions should not include that shipping isn’t as important as we make it (Yes it should), but... that’s where it’s at.

And then again, a lot of you guys expressed disapproval for Darkling/Alina, discussing how it is often one-sided and manipulative and overall unhealthy, so I could be completely off with that last one. Some people mentioned that they ship this but as a slightly different version that the one given to us, recognising the flaws of the canon ship.

Someone said they headcanon Tolya as aroace (OMG YES!!). We need more aroace characters, so thank you for that headcanon :) We also have a few gay ships mentioned here, and one person telling us they love Malina. Yes, you’re right - it’s pretty unpopular, it turns out. Someone else said Alina should’ve been single, and I agree, actually!

One person rickrolled me here. Thankfully, Youtube’s ads saved me. *wipes forehead*

I leave you all with this, in the end:

Notes from the Survey

Statistics Stuff:

The top ships were taken from AO3, so some ships may be more focused on in other books and may not provide accurate statistics for an earlier series.

The main circles this was sent around may have had bias as most people are from the same discord server, which has debated these topics in the past. Hence certain ships may have lower-than-average results. In future, this could be improved upon by sending this to other servers and areas of the fandom.

Personal bias may be present in the analysis, though I have tried to minimise this in the more formal sections.

Observations and Notes from Me:

You guys really don’t like Darklina. Or you love it. Usually one or the other. Wow.

Be glad I didn’t talk about any of the cursed ships in this. The things I have seen... (:cowboi_eyes:)

I thought more people would rickroll me, ngl.

What Surprised You Guys:

Kaz/Inej/Jesper

A few of you guys saw some of those cursed ships, and that surprised you. Well, me too!

Nikolai ships being in the TV Show section at all, what with his character not being in the show (yeah what was up with that huh tztz)

Inej/Alina

The existence of The Severed Moon

Darkling/Nikolai(/Alina)

How fun the quiz was :D

Things You Sent Me:

Bee Movie copypasta

“Nobody expects The Spanish Inquisition!”, except via an AO3 link

A fun fact about enzymes! I liked this one

Fic recs for Feriku and Sarai (esp for Wylan/Jesper shippers)

Another rickroll

Nice compliments :) aww you guys

I asked everyone for some kind of placeholder name and never used it. Sorry! But hey, anonymity, right?

Closing Statements

If you got this far (I feel like ive been sitting here for hours), thanks for reading! This was fun to do and I hope you enjoyed all of this too! The survey is still open for anyone who hasn’t done it but wants to. If I get a huge amount of new responses, I might update this post! But for now, adios!

-mod emily (and mod fritz)