#inej ghafa

[sarahwithanh5]

Just stab me it's easier

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

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

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

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

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

[conniferab]

They're the six of Crows!!!

(imagine Nina saying "omg kazs hair looks even worse from the back" and Jesper saying "I know he should let ME cut it" and wylan saying "you're not really all that better cutting hair")

[jkriordanverse]

Nothing. Just Nina one day forgetting how Matthias looks like, the blue of his eyes, the blond of his hair, the sharp curve of his jaw, the way his body fitted hers, the downturn of his lips when he scowled, the bridge of his nose, the way his voice sounded.

[stromuprisahat]

He thought of Inej’s hand on his cheek. His mind had gone jagged at the sensation, a riot of confusion. It had been terror and disgust and—in all of that clamor—desire, a wish that lingered still, the hope that she would touch him again.

Six of Crows- Chapter 38 (Leigh Bardugo)

Quite literally "What is this? Affection? Disgusting. Do it again.".

[dragonqueenstormwitch]

me reading “he was just wylan van eck. he told them everything.” for the first time

[undercover-grisha]

Medieval Crows AU - don’t ask me the specific year, if I get into all that I’ll never actually write the AU 😭

Nina: Started as a foreign knight in training, became the apothecary’s apprentice. Is tired of Kaz bossing her around, but still gives him pain meds when he looks a bit too tense (but won’t ask for them himself)

Inej: Laundress. Knows everyone’s secrets. Consistently always a little fed up with Jesper for his bright colors, and even more fed up when he starts dressing the prince in bright colors too

Kaz: Steward in training, just under Per Haskell, but everyone knows who’s really in charge, and who’s just drinking his job away. Basically has to do the job of bossing around the servants, but doesn’t get to influence the actual royals very often

Matthias: Political prisoner from Fjerda. Only really interacts with the apothecary’s apprentice because it’s her job to fix him up after he was found, and to… bring him food every night… and cuddle with him while they both miss their home countries…? All in her job description. Who is Matthias to question the serving culture of Kerch

Jesper: Was a stable boy, brought in specially from Novyi Zem itself, but has recently become Keeper of the Wardrobe for the Prince, and has to dress him every day and pick his clothes out for every event

Wylan: the Prince

Pekka: King’s Right Hand

[b-on-paper]

Sorry for the bad quality of the photo

[sleepdeprivedstoat]

Inej is the quiet girl in the back that's actually really good once you put her on stage, she's mostly used for the ensemble stuff (because she does acrobatics)

Kaz joined with her but mostly because it looks good on a college application

Six of Crows is like if you put a bunch of theatre kids in a room and gave them trauma and also weapons

[sarahwithanh5]

I just finished Crooked Kingdom, I have no purpose in life anymore

I cried for two hours (other than the scattered crying all over the past 30 hours)

I miss them already 😔

Anyway, I NEED SOMETHING SIMILAR TO READ PLEASE GIMME SUGGESTIONS

[lunarthecorvus]

Brum hunts down slaver ships... I've missed this detail so many times

now I'm imagining Inej coming across Brum and possibly killing him because he's trying to capture innocent grisha but also for the brother in arms she lost and for her best friend who lived in fear her whole life because of people like him

[jkriordanverse]

netflix robbed me of Colm Fahey being an excellent parent for [time] straight complinations when they cancelled soc s2 and i will never forgive then for that

[elijahs-dumps]

obsessed.

Back on my analysis nonsense but not quite awake enough to write a full essay right now so please enjoy this snippet of analysis about Inej, language, and the word “girl”. It’s all stuff I’ve talked about before but I haven’t given it’s own post before and I’ve been rereading some of my old stuff to get back in the mindset so I thought I’d bring this back up because I find it really interesting - I’m also really hoping to write the post about Fruszi that I’ve been planning on doing for basically since season 2 came out tomorrow or at least very soon so hopefully that won’t be too long

Inej Ghafa, Language, and the Word “Girl”

⚠️As always in my analyses, constant spoilers ahead!! 🖤

⚠️I’m going to talk about Inej’s trauma and her ptsd, and this post will also possibly include references to the other characters’ trauma and ptsd as well

Hi okay it’s been a while since we did this and I realise it’s probably the reason most of you follow me so sorry about that but let’s jump right in - I often say it’s after midnight and I’m thinking about Soc so let’s talk but today I actually have to say it’s almost midnight and I’m thinking about Six of Crows, so let’s talk: Inej’s internalised misunderstanding of the Kerch word for “girl”.

In the Bathroom Scene during Crooked Kingdom (which I have a full analysis posted of if anyone would like to read it; I can tag you or you can follow the link in my pinned post), we see Inej at the point she allows herself to be most vulnerable with another character. I think we forget this because we know much more about it than they do, but the other Crows know very little about what Inej went through at the Menagerie - Kaz himself in that very scene describes having “the barest inkling of what she’d endured there” - and previously when we’ve learnt anything about her experiences they have mostly been through flashbacks that Inej experienced during other events of the book. On the boat to Fjerda, in the surgeon’s cabin with Nina, Inej battles with flashbacks and insists Nina sing to her and teach her the chorus of the song to try and distract herself - Nina of course knows that something is going on, but only the reader is actually told what’s happening in Inej’s head - and when she has a flashback at Sweet Reef (the man who smelled of vanilla) she’s alone until Dunyasha arrives. This scene with Kaz is really the only time we see her express herself and, as openly as she can, attempt to speak about some extent of what she went through out loud. I’ve dissected a lot of what she says in this scene in the past and formed theories about it before, but I haven’t talked as much about this quote:

“Tante Heleen wasn’t always cruel”

After this introduction she goes on to explain the emotional abuse and manipulation that Heleen put her through, going so far as to specify that because endearment became something akin to danger she flinched the first time Nina hugged her, and she also mentions in the scene that sometimes when Jesper puts his arm around her she feels like she’s going to vanish. This particular description of Heleen has very strong parallels to descriptions of Van Eck’s abuse of Wylan, and though I don’t want to go into that in too much detail now bc I’ve talked about it before and how their parallels are what create a lot of the Wylan/Inej parallels I do think that it’s a relevant thing to mention as I bridge into the next quote I want to bring up; when Van Eck takes Inej captive and is claiming that he has treated her like this because this is what he know her to expect from her life experiences, she internally comments that he sounds like Heleen and we get a memory of this quote:

“Why do you make me do these things? You bring these punishments on yourself, girl”.

This obviously had very strong links to the way Van Eck abuses Wylan and teaches him to actively blame himself, which I’ve talked about in the last, but I also want to add that it’s so interesting when we see Heleen call Inej “girl” because she very rarely uses terms that don’t actively dehumanise her/any of the other children at the Menagerie. Of course the use of the epithet is still a big part of the way Inej was denied identity at the Menagerie, remember she audibly sobbed when Kaz said her real name out loud the night she left, but it doesn’t necessarily hold the same immediate, discomforting effect that other epithets Heleen uses, such as “little Lynx” (actively diminishing and dehumanising Inej whilst using an oxymoronic phrase to effectively imply that she is a tamed animal and even though she should be able to fight free she never will. As a side note linked to this, the word “little” is often used derogatorily towards Inej, most obviously by Heleen and Van Eck and most notably when she breaks his nose and he shouts “you little wretch! You little whore!” and she replies “go on Van Eck, tell me all the little things I am”). But I would actually argue that when Heleen uses the word “girl”, she intends it with all the same dehumanisation as she does “Lynx”.

Throughout Inej’s experiences in the duology, the word “girl” is used almost exclusively in two ways: 1) as an insult, 2) possessively. Whenever the children at the Menagerie are referred to as “girls” it is always in a possessive context, for example these quotes are the Ice Court Heist when Inej is wearing the Lynx silks:

“… in front of her girls”

“Your girl will be returned to you”

“Where is my girl?”

“That is not my girl”

And this is an ongoing theme throughout the books. However, the idea is most obviously presented in a quote by Inej herself, and this is where it quite truly breaks my heart:

“not really people, not even really girls.”

Okay I'm really tired and this post is already longer than I was planning so from this point forth everything in the quotation marks is directly taken from another post where I talked more briefly about this:

' As if “girls” and “people” are two separate entities. As if “girls” are not human. This is the language and the attitude that she was surrounded by at the Menagerie and is still surrounded by in the city, and what was forced upon her throughout her experiences in the country. But you know what else might be a genuinely horrifying little detail of this????? Inej may have actually taught herself that the words “people” and “girls” are not synonymous. Because when Inej was brought to Kerch she wasn’t fluent in the language, she spoke some of it and quickly learnt the rest through circumstance, so if this was the way she heard Kerch people use the word “girl” this is how she would internalise the definition of it. I hope this makes sense I’m not sure if I’m relating my thoughts very clearly, it’s kind of like how Matthias was forced to learn Kerch because he was in a Kerch prison so he doesn’t know words that would easily come to him in Fjerdan, like the snow goggles, but instead of simply having gaps Inej has actually learnt a false grammar system that defines “girl” as a dehumanising term because it means someone who is less than or someone who is property. '

I feel like I might have had something to add but if I did then I have forgotten it; if it return to me in the morning then I will return to add it but for now I am going to bid you all goodnight. Thank you for reading these mad ramblings and I hope they made some semblance of sense and/or were interesting <33

⚠️This is a theory and this is my personal literary interpretation; I am not saying that this is an intentional choice made by Leigh Bardugo, though it may be I have no idea, and I am not saying that you have to agree with me. Literary analysis is not about presenting one definitive answer, and if you have either differing interpretations or further points you’d like to add then please do as I would love to read them! <3

[crankycripple]

inej ☀️🗡️

[shit-people-probably-didnt-say]

Jesper: We had such a laugh the last time we went for a drink though, we’ve got to do it again eventually

Inej: Oh absolutely

Kaz: We’ll do Christmas drinks

Jesper…Its February

[dasiesanddarkness]

fic where jesper gets hurt and Kaz freaks out?

Inej’s voice was soft when she spoke. “He was really scared, Jes.”

“Wylan? Trust me, I know. He’s yelled at me at least three times since-”

“No.” Inej was looking at him intently. She was being serious, the one thing Jesper had been avoiding since he woke up. “Kaz.”

Jesper blinked. “Kaz? Inej, don’t tease. I’m still of weak constitution.”