#jesper: i like this autistic man

[shit-people-probably-didnt-say]

Wylan: What was that? Sorry, I was too busy making normal human gestures to show I was listening that I wasnt able to actually listen

[reonnex]

The infantilization of book!Wylan and show!Wylan really needs to be looked at.

This isnt a call out, or trying to hate on anyone, just an overall thing I've seen throughout being in this fandom

In the books while Wylan is a child he is also 16. People underestimate him into innocent and even younger. And while he is naive, this does not make him innocent. He has his own morals, own judgment that havent been ripped away from him yet. He is just trying to survive.

People use the "we could wake them up line" a lot snd I agree! But to also look at the full lines as well

Wylan gestured to the guards. "Is it safe to leave them, you know-"

"Alive? I'm not big on killing unconscious men."

"We could wake them up."

"Pretty ruthless, merchling. Have you ever killed anyone?"

"I'd never even seen a dead body before I came to the Barrel." Wylan admitted.

"It's not something to be embarrassed about," Jesper said, surprising himself a little. But he meant it. Wylan needed to learn to take care of himself, but it would be nice if he could do it without getting on friendly terms with death."Make sure the gags are tight."

This isnt him being ruthless. Its him being logical. He is taking what Jesper says to heart. Wake them instead of killing them unconscious becuase Jesper doesn't want to kill unconscious men. Which they do end up tying the soldier to a pole, not killing them!! Him having morals shouldn't contribute to claims of him being innocent.

Wylan is worried about hurting people but will do so if nessecasry to save his friends. We can see this in the show and books. In the show he does not want to make bombs for Kaz, but does so in the end because he acknowledges he has to survive. He is worried about Alby, but goes along with the plan still.

All these are what makes Wylan, wylan. It is his fundamentals, his morals and idels. They are not however claims to see how sweet and innocent he is and how he was corrupted.

Ontop of this, while it is never y it is hevaily implied that Wylan is also autistic. (Also, correct me if im wrong please, but im pretty sure Jack did talk about this.) Autistic people get infantilizated already, and I've had my own fair share of this as well. ( I am autistic and have a learning disabilitiy, as well a speech impedament that I still struggle with.) I have to work harder to make sure people treat me as a twenty year old. Because that is my age, and there is a significant difference in attitude in how people treat me when they know im autistic, and when they don't.

And for Wylan, I feel like its the same issue. While it may not be intentional, ive been people coo over the fact Wylan has done simple tasks or teen experiences. Him having Jesper read to him, getting flustered when talking to him, Wylan not understanding social cues as well as others and taking things to face value.

You can be excited for him and think it's sweet, but to also acknowledge that there is a line between "Thats adorable" and "He's adorable." Wylan is someone who is neurodivergent. He was extrmetly sheltred as a child and was never given the proper tools to help his dyslexia, due to this he has struggles that shouldn't be overlooked or seen as "cute" when he experiences outcomes due to the situation he was in. Whenever he doesn't understand social cues, i.e., "Whos mark." People giggling and saying it's silly or cute when he doesn't understand the cues. That's infantilizating! You are viewing things he struggles with in the lens of watching a child understanding the world. Which Wylan isn't. He is a teenager, no matter the circumstances. His age should be understood.

This infantilization also effects wesper in how people view the two of them. Many people view black people as "older, the man in the relationship, rugged" while the white person is seen as the "women, younger, more innocent."

Infact, I think the show only worsned it for Wylan. As now there are faces to names.

Jack does have a youthful face, but still looks his age. I have a babyface and even now at 20 I look much older then I did at 16. The same goes for Jack. He cant control how he looks but because of his youthful features people only push for this racially hetaronormative mindset more between Wylan and Jesper (Even if its untitional).

Even Kit looks his age as well and has a baby face. He's 29 right now but was in his mid twenties during filming. Season 1 was filmed back in 2019 but due to covid post production got set back, and season 2 was filmed in the beginning of 2022. But why is it only Wylan who is infantilizated? Jesper struggles just as much with his ADHD and trauma as Wylan does.

Jack and Kit are only one year apart, the same in the books but still ive been Wylan be portrayed as the "poor innocent child who was abused." and Jesper as the "he needs to get over his addiction hes a grown man/ he's too mean to Wylan."

In society now so many black teens are seen as adults and treated as such, while white teens are seen as younger and not pushed so hard. The same can be seen for wesper.

Ive even seen people on Tiktok and other socials claim that Jesper was rude to Wylan and abusive. (WHERE???). Both Wylan and Jesper have said things that hurt the other, and they both apologized for it, and get grilled as well. In the show and books they learn and grow. The infantilization of Wylan doesnt hurt just him but plays into racial stereotypes and also microagressions. Why is it that when the white character is calling someone out its "deserved" but when the black character (who might I add had no idea) makes a side comment he is labled as cruel and abusive?

In so many shows and books the black character is usually portrayed as the joker character. Six Of Crows does this as well, which is something important to not ingore. Jesper is seen as the flirty joke character. However the only difference is soc also show more sides to his character by letting him be vulnerable. Letting Jesper show his struggles to the audience as well, how his neurodivergece effects him, letting him dress in skirts and bold colors that step away from the gender norm. So many times in media the black character is just there for shits and giggles, or is used as the villan/antagonist.

It believe its really important to understand this, and to acknowledge if your infantilizating him, or even using microagressions on Jesper unintentionally, then to learn to understand why and to grow from them.

[goblinthefrog]

On top of my love for neurodivergent show SaB Wylan, Kit’s playing of Jesper is also so perfect. The way that he so easily accepts Wylan for who he is is amazing.

He listens to Wylan’s rants about his interests, no matter what they are, and tries to continue communication in the process. While Jesper doesn’t particularly care for the butterflies, Wylan does and he wants to do what will make Wylan happy and expresses that exactly. He also tried to compliment Wylan whenever he could.

He shows pride in him in a way Wylan has never experienced before. He calls him a genius and he means it. He proudly exclaims that Wylan is his when he thinks of throwing the bomb at the Nichevo’ya (even if it didn’t work for long). He also silently stares in wonder after Wylan plays the piano for Alby, a skill that Wylan father always looked down upon in the books.

He sees Wylan as endearing, but not in the way a lot of TV likes to express neurodivergent characters, as if they are akin to children. Wylan is, as I like to believe, autistic but they doesn’t infantilize him. He didn’t know what Kaz was going to get him into, but once he learned he decided to stick around on his own and became an important part of their crew. I also appreciate the illusion to sex scenes, it further expresses the idea that Wylan is not a child but a grown man in a serious relationship.

[lassieposting]

Things I'm emotional about in 1x04:

This line from Kirigan: "When I was a boy After I created the Fold I used to run away and hide here. Once I realised I was a descendant of the most hated Grisha in Ravka...I'd come here, throw a coin, make a wish in the fountain. Same wish, over and over again. That I could be anyone else."

90% of this is? Most likely true. He's not even lying, he's just changed a few details.

2. Alina asking him, "Was I properly schooled?" after she recounts the story of the Black Heretic. She doesn't know that's him, but she believes they're family, and she's giving him an opportunity to set the story straight if she's mistaken, tell her his family's side. And he actually responds to this! Sort of, because centuries of trust issues are like. A Thing, and he's learned the hard way that trusting anyone is usually a Very Bad Idea. But he tells her that he's been trying to bring down the Fold and put things right all his life since then, and opens up a little, and looks surprised at himself that he did.

3. "Nina Zenik...hasn't reported in. If she's alive, she may need our help."

A whole army under his command, and he sends one of his own personal bodyguards after her. I love a man who doesn't leave his agents in the shit, even if it's only because they're useful. It would have been so easy for him to dismiss her as compromised and send someone to eliminate her before she's able to give up any information to Fjerda - but he sends Fedyor to help her instead. Fuck me up.

4. Genya trying so hard to flirt with poor awkward David. This man is a massive autistic mood. The woman who never compliments anyone gives him like three compliments in a row and he's just like yep okay thank you bye

5. The sheer amount of trust between Inej and Jesper for her to let him shoot a playing card out of her mouth. For a girl with such a traumatic backstory full of so much loss and pain, that she's able to trust anyone that much makes me feel things.

[harbingerofwhump]

Your new tumblr name (title? pseudonym?) is terribly intriguing will you please share your wisdom/headcanon

Ahahaha, so, I have to be honest it came more from an inside joke with a couple friends than a specific "kaz is a femboy" headcanon. But also, I think it works well with Thoughts/headcanons that I've had about Kaz anyway so I stand by it lmao, so!

I've kind of always imagined Kaz as being very gnc (if not trans or enby). He presents himself however is convenient for him in the moment (for jobs, cons, etc.), or to make a statement (mocking the merchers), but when the way he presents doesn't really matter, that all goes out the window. Which doesn't have to be tied to Femboy Kaz but it can be, and I think he'd very much be the kind of person to say "fuck gender norms I do what I want" (insert tangent about autistic!kaz and social norms/expectations in general here) and at some point he realizes that what he wants is to wear pretty dresses and makeup thank you very much

And it can serve a purpose beyond personal feelings too! It's no 'mock the merchers and make them uncomfortable by dressing as one of them' but I think he still could (and would) use it to make a point and as a a sort of... act of rebellion? (since we have at least some indication that sexism/misogyny is prevalent at least to some extent in the grishaverse), especially if he found out any of his crew (crows or otherwise) had been having problems with it. Like just, him whole-heartedly embracing femininity and making it everyone else's problem, he knows it doesn't change anything, it isn't a weakness or something to hide/be ashamed of --- in him or anyone else --- etc., and he will gladly make other people uncomfortable with that and put them in the position of having to either face that or do mental gymnastics to hold on to their preconceived ideas

Also also also! I dunno I just generally have feelings about like…. As Kaz starts to heal, he has to open up not just to his friends but also to himself? If that makes sense? Like he has to figure out who he is as a person, just himself --- no 'I live to exact revenge in Jordie's name', no masks/personas, no Dregs, no Inej and Jesper & Co., just. Him.

(Which isn't to say these aren't still critical aspects of/don't have a critical role in who he is, but. Ya know. There's more to it, he has to figure out who he is beyond that, etc. I'm definitely not explaining this well but hopefully my point is getting across?)

Anyway, sorry, bit of a tangent there. Point is, I think his healing journey comes with its fair share of self exploration/discovery, and I imagine gender presentation/exploring femininity, especially as a man, being an unexpected but important part of that.

But I think one of the biggest things for me here is that like… disability (trauma, chronic pain, mental illness) can be really alienating, not just from society/people around you but also from yourself and your own body? And how you dress and generally present can be incredibly important regardless of identity and neurotype and physical capabilities and all that, but then to bring in those other aspects --- the way it impacts how others view and treat you, how you generally feel, your own connection to your body and personhood, etc (how many times can I use "etc." in this post, lol) --- as well... Idk maybe this isn't a common experience but at least to me that all really intensifies the role/importance of outward presentation?

Plus, between his reputation and his limp/cane and the gloves, Kaz is probably already so accustomed to people taking the very nature of his existence as an invitation to… be invasive, I guess? (There's definitely a better way to explain what I mean but.) But anyway, even if a lot of the time people know better than to actually push him or voice their speculations and invasiveness to his face, it does happen and he knows it, so what's one more thing to give them? * Cue fun femboy times *

Idk if I… actually made any sense here and I was definitely very brief/vague but. Just some of my thoughts. If I was better at putting said thoughts into coherent words for people not living inside my brain, I'd be writing a whole essay on this, but alas….

Sorry I feel like this is probably a disappointing answer since none of it is actually inherently about Kaz being a femboy, but it's also not a specific headcanon I have about him, just something that can fit well with ideas/thoughts/headcanons/what have you that I had already, so I don't have much to offer there.

[hamliet]

Crows With A Side of Bone, Please

Hamliet finally wrote that review.

I'll start off by saying that everyone is a very good actor. Jessie Mei Li has essentially nothing to work with, but she does her best to sell it anyways and still makes me care about her. Ben Barnes is delightfully evil while still affording the character sympathy the narrative doesn't give him.

The Crows--oh lord, the Crows. All of them have chemistry as a group and as couples. Wylan's actor is fantastic here and feels like a natural fit with the other 5, and Nina's actress also fits perfectly with the crew. They do have a lot to work with, and they manage to fully flesh out their already 3D characters and make them alive.

Kanej, Wesper, Nina/Matthias, Genya/David

The good ships, because this season I revoke my like of Malina that season 1 introduced me to.

I wrote this about Kanej. But also more about Kanej, because OTP OTP OTP.

I loved the final scene with them in the finale, where he grabs her, and she holds his hand and tells him, bluntly, that she does not want him with armor on. The line is one of my favorites in the book, and the show did an excellent job of showing the totality of it, the wholistic nature of what Inej is asking for. Yes, she's asking for him without his cold persona, without his bravado. She's asking for his vulnerabilities.

But she's also asking for his body. For him not to see her as broken. For him not to settle for less than all of her. She is thirsty, and I honestly think this was a beautiful portrayal of someone who has been hurt and is wary, but still wants and believes in the potential for good in sex. The show made this aspect so much more forefront than I remember it being in the books, and I honestly love it.

I also liked the choice to get Wylan and Jesper together early on. The piano scene emphasizes both of their respective gifts, and Wylan's fear over what Kaz might do to Alby clearly projects Wylan's own fears about being condemned for his father. (Wylan is actually one of my favorites in the books because his disability is, imo, good representation.)

Nina and Matthias didn't get nearly as much screentime this season (together anyways), but they made the most of every moment anyways. Even when they are apart we see the potential in how they are still affecting each other. We see Nina's determination. We see Matthias's hurt. We see the pride and humility they both carry, and how both can inhibit and also free them. There's so much potential there.

The motif of prisons, of hiding, is very strong in the Crows' arcs. Matthias uses his masculinity as a prison and chooses to fight over be free because he's scared. Wylan hides his family and disability. Jesper hides his gift. But if you want to have a complete life, you have to step out into the light. Which is a perfect way to segway into Alina, but...

Let's save the salt for later.

Also, not a ship, but I quite liked Nikolai. His character is one of the standouts in the original trilogy (because complexity). His volcra issue being rearranged timewise to be a cliffhanger I don't mind either.

David's death was, just like it is in Rule of Wolves, cruel and pointless. Just like Matthias's in Crooked Kingdom. Give Genya happiness. She earned it. So did David. Love seeing a woman who's been sexually abused and maimed find hope and healing with an autistic man who is almost NEVER a love interest in stories and then he dies for The Sads. Real inspiring. Real thoughtful. There is no narrative nor character reason for it to happen at all, and so early only made it worse honestly.

Show, Don't Tell

Mal tells Alina he has so many friends in the army that he's worried about, but we saw exactly 0 of these in the previous season. In fact, we saw Mal pulling away from the army to pursue Alina.

It was ridiculous that Alina's response to Kirigan in the climax saying people would come for her was "I will save myself," and then literally ONE SECOND LATER Inej saves her. Alina has never saved herself this entire dang series. Not in either season. The Crows save her each and every time! And that's not a bad thing--it could offer something about the power of relying on others, but to blatantly lie to your audience when you've shown us something else... bad writing yo.

I also wish they'd given us a reason to care about Ravka. They keep saying it's worth saving, worth protecting, but... why? We aren't even given the easiest narrative techniques to make us care about the common people (see, Alby making us care about Pekka even though we hate him=a good way of making us care. Give us a child who needs saving, a connection to the people, something, anything. If people deserve saving just because they are people well, that demonstrably flies in the face of what happens to Kirigan, so....)

Imprinting

It still baffles me that Alina again preaches about choice and yet even fate determined Mal's finding Alina. It was literally imprinting. That's what imprinting is. And for some reason Malina is held up as... healthy? When it's clearly extremely codependent?

It's not a huge problem that it's codependent, though, on principle. It's fiction. What does bother me is the hypocrisy of trying to tear apart every bad thing "bad boys" do while portraying Malina as healthy when it's demonstrably not. Malina would be far, far more interesting, frankly compelling, if they actually delved into this. The cliffhanger hinted they might do just this, but given other aspects, I'm not sure I quite trust them to follow up and follow though.

If you're gonna condemn what some people like and hold up what you like in comparison, at least make sure you're honest about its flaws.

Abuse is Bad Except Not if a Woman Does It. Then It's Girl Power!

Again, the themes of the Crows almost, at times, contradict Shadow & Bones' purported themes. But that's not hard, because Shadow & Bones' purported themes contradict themselves.

I've said this before, but I'll say again that there is a difference between complexity and paradoxes and portrayal the oft-contradictory reality of our world and contradicting your theme. A contradiction is much more common in a simplistic story, which S&B is.

Why is it wrong and seen as a sign of evil beyond comprehension for the Darkling to hurt his mother, who is acknowledged even by the show to have abused him, but not inherently wrong for Alina or Inej or Kaz to hurt their abusers?

Literally Bhagra said "know that i loved you and it wasn't enough." We are NEVER shown her loving him; we are shown abuse, which the show does kind of acknowledge, while also trying to vindicate Bhagra while holding the Darkling to standards it doesn't hold any other character.

Yes, there's some complexity here insofar as Inej and Kaz's relationships with abuse and revenge go. They aren't black and white, and the characters waffle in the gray. But Alina and the Darkling literally are light and darkness, and the gray is explicitly rejected. And there is actually a way to make this work!

You have to frame it as a tragedy.

Kaz, Inej, Genya et al mess up and do terrible things in revenge; they even at times (especially Kaz) walk the line between utterly losing themselves to it. But they have people around them to pull them back, to reach for them. The Darkling does not. This could be portrayed as something sad, as someone trying to reach the hurting child inside him and him continuously rejecting them (for example, Adam and Blake in RWBY), with his death framed as something to mourn rather than viewed as a moment of triumph, but no. The show doesn't offer him this (to be fair. Neither did the books.)

And to people who say Alina's not obligated to do so! Yes, yes, sure, but also Alina's inherent goodness is just assumed, when she's demonstrably kind of callous at best. I talked about this more in my review of Season 1, but yeah. Nothing's changed on that front.

The point is also that... what has the Darkling actually done to Alina? There were ways to emphasize him as an abuser, which he is clearly coded as, but the show (and the books tbh) doesn't do that. Alina supposedly mourns her parents, but we're given a handful of lines and nothing to actually show us the impact of losing them. (Again, Alina's self-centered focus is actually very much a trauma response to this... or could be, but the story doesn't want to explore it.) The impact of his lies is just not really explored on a deep level like it should be if you want to go for the "abuser" angle. See again, Blake Belladonna for how you do that.

Alina's "there is no redemption" line was baffling to me. It was framed like some sort of powerful "I. Am. Iron Man" moment, except okay, if that's your power girl, I don't think it's a good one.

Power Fantasies

This is my issue with Shadow & Bone the books as well: they aim to deconstruct "Beauty and the Beast" but fail to understand the appeal of the story in the first place is not "oh i have a dangerous boyfriend" but instead a healing power fantasy the same way fight-punch-kick can be a power fantasy. Shadow & Bone also directly tries to deconstruct Jungian symbolism of the shadow, but also doesn't like, understand what Jungian symbolism stands for. Until the ending, that is, when the writers were clearly like "Bardugo doesn't get it but we do and we're keeping it."

Again, I'll contrast this with Blake in RWBY, whose portrayal I have criticized before, but which is much better than the portrayal here. Blake is herself both beauty and beast, which emphasizes the traditional fairy tale's emphasis on accepting the worst of ourselves and recognizing both the beautiful aspects of ourselves at the same time. We tend to see ourselves as either Good or Bad, but only when we see ourselves as both do we mature and truly live. Even though Adam is ultimately "put down" in RWBY, Blake still acknowledges her flaws and doesn't see Adam as inherently bad, but he leaves her absolutely no choice. Alina facing down the Darkling offers her zero introspection and growth.

Sigh. It's a 2.5/5 for me. The Crows are everything. I want their spin off. I need it. I will take Zoya and Nikolai too.

[bookishbunnies]

Episode 6

Wylan, your friends are dying and you're excited about the butterflies??? Top tier autistic representation honestly

Awwwwh Wylan, holy shit that's so fucking adorable. Speaking louder just so Jesper can hear you. You fucking sweetheart. But uh, Jesper can't hear you soz

Omg this is how we get Jesper backstory?? His mother!!! 😍

Ooh, Baghra knows. Or at least has her suspicions.

Oooh yes, morozova story time

Ooh yes Baghra, talk more about Mals family.

Oh cmon Mal. You kept going till you found Alina. Is Baghra really gonna have to spell it out?

Really Baghra, you stop the story there???

Wylan, don't you think they tried simply opening the door?? If tolya couldn't get it open what makes you think you can? Blow it the fuck up dammit

Oooooh, Tolya and Tamar backstory??? Wait no, hallucination? Interesting, the others had flashbacks, not fiction

Wylan, maybe don't put your face directly up to the small hole you just made into a room filled with poisonous air?? 😅

I love Jespers mother so much. I wish we got to see more of her

Huh, okay maybe Baghra doesn't know for sure. Otherwise opening that door would've gone differently

I know Mal and Alinas convos are supposed to be emotional but honestly I'm laughing everytime coz of all the foreshadowing 😂

THE KANEJ ARMY ARE WINNING. ABSOLUTELY FUCKING WINNING

This is exactly how I imagined the scene. Perfect. The question. The little tug. The hand in the face. The hesitation. But holy shit it hurts so much that it's not real. That Kaz doesn't get to experience it too. Why must you hurt me like this????

Omg yes, autistic hyperfixations for the win. You are a beautiful man Wylan.

Lol, Inej shoving it in her mouth before he can even say it might sound strange. She trusts him with her life 💚

Alright, Tolya is mama now, it's official

Omg Jesper, don't sound so surprised. You've literally told the man how intelligent he has how many times and you're surprised??

Oh Kaz, and Inej. Didn't see anything? Nice to see we're still denying all our feelings 😂

Wow, Mals better at denying shit than Kanej. You literally just closed the door that only a Morozova can affect. And you respond with 'you're lying'???

Wow that's rude, messing with a man's guns.

Oh I need Wylan to save them here, it's gonna be gorgeous

Absolutely love Jespers priorities, fixing his guns

Once again, Baghra is fucking amazing. She knew what needed to be done and she fucking did it

Okay that was not how I was expecting that to go. Damn, they really have a habit for meeting living saints 😅

Awwh, I am living for every single look between Wylan and Jesper 😍

Oooh, is this why they made Alina part Shu??? Did they think this far ahead, had all this planned out already????

Jesper?? Okay, why him? Coz he's a durast?

Shes using her first husband as a table????

Awwh, it is coz he's a durast, a terrible one apparently 😂

This is such a good Jesper episode. We get to see his mother, and he gets to be more comfortable being a durast

Omg, Tolya and Jespers look 😂

Omg, 'someone someday is gonna come sweep you off your feet' yes Nina, his name is Nikolai, and he will so brilliantly sweep Zoya off her feet 😍

Wow they got their priorities straight. You have to kill me Alina. Okay let's have sex.

Like yeah I get it, but it's still funny

Ah yes, nothing like pouring your dead mother bone dust onto the stump of your hand that she cut off with her dying breath.

Well fuck. Baghra did not see that one coming

[doorsclosingslowly]

Easy

Several years after moving in together, Kaz and Jesper go on a date.

4.8k | Kaz/Jesper | modern au, autistic Kaz | cn: past suicide attempt mention

It’s not quite as easy as Kaz imagined it would be, dating Jesper. He’s imagined it a lot: and maybe that should have been his first clue that he’s not… made of stone and sea water, monstrous, inhuman, and then, begrudgingly, a straight man.

However dangerous and stormy his life was, it was one of the certainties he could count on, that dating Jesper would be a delight, a flashing neon bonfire of welcome, a piece of cake. He’s known that for almost as long as they’ve lived together, which is almost six months more than they’ve been friends, and they’ve been friends for a decade. He’s known because he’s listened to Jesper talk about past flames, bring his one-night-stands burnt French toast, and he’s imagined the rest. In retrospect, he’s imagined everything in more vivid detail than any straight man would about his flatmate, second in command, eternal annoyance, best friend. He’s imagined it so often.

Jesper’s just… Jesper, though. He overshares, especially when it makes Kaz blush. He forgets tubes of lipstick in the freezer. He walks around naked because he didn’t bring socks into the bath. He smooths over Kaz’ disagreements with his lackeys without even breaking a sweat. He punched a man for calling Kaz a virgin and then rambled for an hour about the ace spectrum and virginity both being nothing to be ashamed of and being a social construct, like money, which is also fake and so Kaz shouldn’t bitch him out for gambling away another five hundred euros.

They were in Jesper’s room—like they often are late at night, Kaz storming inside to complain about Per Haskell or disorder or music and then just forgetting to leave—when Kaz admitted his thoughts. Jesper was talking about enrolling in a metalworking class, even though their cellar was a graveyard of hobbies he’d passionately adored for five days and abandoned. Wasted money, wasted space, wasted time, but there was no force in the universe that could freeze Jesper in place, and Kaz no longer wanted to try. Jesper’s long fingers were flitting through the air as he sketched out the so-called stackable Letter Tray of Crime and Doom he was going to weld, with a little dungeon for their boss’ eternally frustrating vague post-its.

I wish I could kiss you, Kaz first thought to himself, and then, straight away, he told Jesper.

It was the easy option, better than lying, because Jesper had just dropped his glass of lemonade onto the carpet to hover, a careful two meters away. Something must have shown on Kaz’ face. Adoration, but that’s… Kaz knows he isn’t particularly expressive, but the fact that he indulges Jesper far too often can’t be new. Shock, maybe. Regret. Because any normal person would have known what to do with the realization that they reciprocatetheir best friend’s feelings. Any normal person would have known earlier. They wouldn’t have left Jes without an answer for years. It couldn’t have been easy.

Jesper's found him obviously attractive from the day they met. He was respectful, but he’s never been subtle. He’s so easy to read that even Kaz can tell exactly what he’s feeling. Shortly before they moved into the current flat together, he’d told Kaz he loved him. ‘I don’t expect anything,’ Jesper said. ‘I just need you to know, in case it changes your opinion on...’and Kaz had told him that it changed nothing, but that it couldn’t change Kaz either. That he just wasn’t...

And it didn’t change anything. They lived together, they talked, they outwitted their rivals and their boss and the cops. They had takeout on the couches and at the table and on Jesper’s bed. They argued about cryptocurrency, devised crypto scams, hijacked computers for mining, listened to podcasts on the political economy of bitcoin and tether and non-fungible tokens and decentralized autonomous organizations and other crypto fad technologies and then prepared more scams, because Kaz wasn’t going to let the chance to steal from complete idiots go by just because Jesper begged him to shut up about the blockchain for a second. Kaz was still the brains of their little crime flat. They illegally built safes into the walls and floor of their rental. They washed down their takeout with sugary sweet cheap homemade cocktails. They had Inej stay over, or Wylan, or Nina and Matthias and Kuwei. They talked. Evening after evening, they talked.

Kaz wasn’t sure he’d be able to kiss Jesper without a panic attack, soon or maybe ever. He’d like to, though, and even if he couldn’t: what was a kiss or sex, compared to everything else?

If anyone could understand what he was getting at, it was Jesper. Jesper was good at this. Relationships. Crushes. Love. Sorting through emotions, declaring every rule Kaz had carried around since childhood a tool of the racist ableist cisheteropatriarchy, et cetera. He was easy to trust. From the first night when Kaz had ordered him to come up into Kaz’ squat and tried to make him drink something warm before realizing he’d run out of food, Jesper’d always been far too easy to trust. Besides, Jesper would have spent tomorrow manically cleaning every floor tile and every spoon in worry if Kaz had just shooed him away.

So Kaz just told him.

‘I’ve been watching you gnaw on your fingernails. The paper tray’s a good idea, I could use another organizing tool for my office,’ Kaz rasped out, ‘but I’ve watched your hands move sketching its contours and I’ve watched the shape of your mouth while you chewed the bronze nail polish off your index finger for fifteen minutes before the street lamp outside made you think of metalworking. It’s not what I’d have done, if I was as straight as we both think—but it’s useless anyway,’ because it would be not just cruel but needless to wake these hopes when he still can’t bear touch. ‘I don’t expect anything. I just want you to know, in case it changes anything for you. I want to kiss you. I can’t, but I’d have liked to.’

And Jesper—Jesper beamed, and called him darling, and suggested they go to a restaurant, in two days, for a date.

So here they are.

It’s not a place Kaz would have chosen, because he doesn’t have any blackmail on the owner or employees, and he wouldn’t have expected it to be Jesper’s thing, either. Whenever Jesper brings Kaz food home—so, about seven days a week, because nine years ago Jesper got worried that Kaz doesn’t eat enough, and besides, Jesper’s not paying anything for rent or internet so he’s got to spend his pay on something that’s not clothes or gambling or yet another hobby or spoiling his loves, might as well keep Kaz fed—it’s from hole-in-the-walls or takeout kiosks, all over the city. Kaz looked up the place his favourite Thai food is from. It’s an hour’s walk away from their flat. No wonder he always shoos Kaz out of the kitchen first when he brings food. He needs to nuke it back to life.

This place has white tablecloths and wine glasses already on top of them. It also has a greeter at the door, an annoying tall Ken doll of a man who reacts to Kaz’ telling him, “The table for Fahey, for two,” with condescending pity.

“You’ve been replaced already,” Ken doll says.

He doesn’t call Jesper a cheap slut out loud. If he had, Kaz would have punched his face concave, but for now, he’ll just remember Ken dolls face and make him regret in a few days that his grandmother’s grandmother didn’t swallow.

Jesper’s at one of the tables near the door, and Kaz would have found him easily himself if the greeter hadn’t intercepted as soon as he entered. Kaz is already fifteen minutes early, so Jesper must’ve… he gets like that sometimes, so focused on a task he just can’t even try to do anything else. He’s in coordinated colours: but he’s dressed classy by Jesper standards, so the teal and blue top is see-through with a plunging back and it’s sparkling, and the piercings in his ears aren’t a hodgepodge of styles anymore but uniform rings in iridescent stainless steel. The black longsleeve he’s wearing under his blouse has a turtleneck so high it almost blends into his tightly cropped hairline.

He's got his back to the restaurant door—leaving the opposite free for Kaz who always needs to watch the newcomers—and his shoulders are tense and almost at his earlobes. He’s saying something about the University of Amsterdam, its Materials Science program, professors, classes, even though he’s avoided that subject desperately ever since he dropped out penni- and homeless. Even though the last time his father mentioned the topic, Jesper relapsed, and Kaz promised Colm Fahey no end of misfortunes if he even thought about tertiary education ever again in his life.

Jesper’s not alone.

There’s a guy sitting next to him, another forgettable smooth Ken doll, a white man with short hair and broad frame and blinding toothpaste smile. Kaz limps over slowly to his chair. He’s not jealous. It’s useless, being jealous about Jesper—he’s easy to talk to, easy to love, Kaz always knew that—and besides, this is a first date, and they’re not exclusive. Jesper’s heart is big enough. Jesper’s got Wylan; Kaz and Inej have once managed to hold hands. This date was an experiment, and once it fails, they’ll just go back to living with each other, complaining at each other, planning ways to fleece the world with technological multilevel marketing schemes, and eating reheated takeout on two separate couches while watching each others’ hands flap and gesture.

Jesper’s wearing a teal paillettes miniskirt that barely covers his ass, and thick black tights. Jesper doesn’t own non-fishnet tights and he doesn’t own turtlenecks, doesn’t particularly like being covered up, but he’s dressed tonight as if he couldn’t choose between going out clubbing and long cozy dead of winter underwear. And Kaz knows why. He won’t put it into words. It’s too hard now. If he admits that it’s just for Kaz… Jesper’s wearing his favourite, five-year-old, purple trainers. No rings, and he’s fidgeting by twisting hard enough at his fingertips that he looks like he’s trying to pull them out of socket, and his legs are crossed, and a pair of what looks like black gloves is lying on his knee, and—

He's staring past Ken doll’s face, and he notices Kaz as soon as Kaz reaches the—chair-less—opposite side of the table. Jesper’s making up for the lack of colour mishmash on his body by feeling everything at once, apparently, his expressive face twisting in a deeply familiar way into guilt, shame, joy, fear… joy wins out. Jesper beams at Kaz, ducking his head a little, and the metallic teal blush on his sharp dark cheekbones, the pink and blue eyeliner, the purple on his lips…

“I’m Carl,” Ken doll interrupts. “I studied with Jesper at university.”

Kaz barely listens to him. He doesn’t matter. This isn’t the first time he’s watched Jesper’s face. He knows every skin cell and every smirk. It is, though, the first time that Jesper’s dressed up as a stormy sunset of a bisexual pride flag. The first time that Jesper’s dressed up to look pretty for a date with him.

Kaz is going to do whatever he wants, Ken doll be damned. What he wants is to stare at his date, his best friend, and Jesper’s definitely flattered as hell that he’s looking. Jesper does terrible yoga poses on the bathroom floor and shouts until Kaz breaks open the lock, expecting to find a medical emergency, just because he wants feedback. Jesper drinks, eats, breathes praise. Most of the things he’s wearing, Kaz has never seen before, which means that while Kaz was at work Jesper spent the whole day buying this outfit. An outfit that covers every inch of his body except for his head. An outfit that means he might conceivably, if he wants to take the risk of ruining the whole evening, touch Jesper’s arm, his thigh, his…

“Jesper taught me quite a lot.” Ken doll leers. “With his mouth.”

He’s touching Jesper’s rigid forearm, as if touch wasn’t the hardest thing in the world. Jesper’s visibly clenching his jaw. He’s not telling Ken doll to fuck off, though, because—

“Before it got too much for Jes, of course, we all could see his crash coming but some people just aren’t cut out for it, you know. It takes perseverance. Brains. A real shame.”

So that’s what happened. Jesper got here way too early, and rather than die of boredom—Kaz can’t see a phone in his hands, so he must’ve forgotten it—he struck up a conversation with the first person who wasn’t busy or got nausea trying to follow his leaps of thought, and when the guy turned out to be a creep Jesper couldn’t just punch him because that would’ve gotten him thrown out, and he forgot his phone. He wouldn’t have been able to text Kaz the new location. Maybe Kaz should buy him a lanyard case for his phone. Can’t forget it when it’s strapped to his neck. Maybe there are metallic ones. Rainbow.

“Scram,” Kaz tells Ken doll.

“What?”

“You’re in my chair. Leave.”

“You…”

He’s still there. Perhaps Kaz was too generous in the assumption that this dullard could keep pace with someone as bright as Jesper. Kaz rests his cane against Ken dolls shin and rasps, “Go away. Our boss was an idiot today and started talking shit about diva cups in Nina’s earshot, and since Jesper begged off work today, I want to tell him about her best insults. Which she can’t have texted him, because he forgot his phone. Then I’m going to ask him about his day. And about his opinion on my newest blockchain idea.”

Ken doll’s eyes widen. “You’re investing in crypto?”

A mark.

Ken doll’s a fucking mark. He’s the ‘greater fool’ in the Greater Fool Game of luring in customers to generate interest and boost the value of assets without inherent worth or utility. He’s the sucker in the cryptocurrency and NFT multilevel marketing scheme. One of those men convinced of their own intelligence, their inherent worth and superiority. Who thinks they’ll make money from nothing if they just invest right, who thinks the reason people are poor is that they haven’t found the one trick to make money, haven’t tried to, because they’re not as smart as him—instead of recognizing that wealth only exists because other people are poor. That loss is not weakness but structural. The profit in bitcoin and tether and NFTs and DAOs comes directly from the pockets of suckers who thought they could get rich. Suckers like him.

It'll be a pleasure cleaning him out.

“Coins are old hat,” Kaz tells Ken doll, slipping into the salesman persona that gives him a wide smile. “If you want to make money, you’ve got to get in on the ground floor. I made my millions with ethereum, years ago, but there’s something better than currency or smart contracts now. Have you heard of DAOs? Decentralized autonomous organizations?”

He hasn’t, of course; Ken doll is ignorant even by blockchain enthusiast standards. Even better.

Jesper knows more than enough to ask the right leading questions. Ken doll barely pays him any attention at all—his greed is stronger than his lechery—but Jesper must remember this man, because he definitely has a plan as he cues Kaz to explain certain technical aspects and gloss over others. He even makes Kaz use the line that a decentralized autonomous organization is anarchism made real. Binding rules without central authority, member-owned communities, and Ken doll nods and whoops and tells Kaz that he would’ve been a communist, you know, if it wasn’t so pie-in-the-sky but he definitely sympathises with the cause. He’s a good guy. And if there’s money in it too?

Kaz watches Jesper’s face out of the corner of his eyes twist in disgust. The dropout that Kaz talked off a bridge ten years ago wouldn’t have been as quick as the Jesper of five days ago, listening to Kaz describe DAOs at the kitchen table, but he would have easily picked up on the fact that if every membership token is a vote and you can buy as many tokens as you have money, it’s just another stupid way to have a rule of the rich.

If Jesper spent any time at all with this complete dullard back at university, he must have been crushingly lonely.

Well. Kaz already knew he was.

He wouldn’t have ended up on that bridge otherwise. Kaz doesn’t understand it, because Jesper is easy to trust and a delight to live with, whether he’s making spires of used laundry on the floor or cleaning the light fixtures with a toothbrush, whether he’s jumping through fifteen topics a minute or tolerating Kaz stuck on a single one for months. Whether he’s telling Kaz it’s okay to murder him the next time he relapses and gambles and tries to steal to pay his debts, or muttering that it's his flat too and he doesn’t have to ask before painting green dicks on the kitchen ceiling. Whether he’s keeping in contact with the rest of the ex-Crow gang like Kaz can’t or redefining comfort so Kaz doesn’t feel useless. Jesper’s a miracle. There’s no-one else the vicious spiteful teenage murderer that Kaz used to be would have let stay in the flat he was squatting, day after day until a year had passed, five, and they moved out together. No-one else would have been stubborn and stupid enough to wear through Kaz’ bruising defences. Kaz was an asshole. He still is. He deserved loneliness. Not like Jes.

Jesper shouldn’t have ended up at three in the morning on a clear winter day staring down at the water from a notorious suicide spot bridge for two full hours, so long that Kaz ended up spotting him from his squatted apartment. He was wearing a neon green shirt and a huge pink wizard hat with a blinking star on top, and that’s the only reason Kaz went down there to talk.

The hat saved him. It shouldn’t have been the hat. There is no justice: but there are people. People who’ve watched Jesper struggle in his classes and in his flat share and in the casino. People he couldn’t trust. People he shouldn’t have trusted.

People like Ken doll.

Ken doll doesn’t have a lot of money, and indebting him, while satisfying, would risk them having to stay in contact.

The asshole yelps and jumps off his chair, a mistake because as soon as he’s upright he yowls again and collapses to his knees. Weakling.

Kaz didn’t even break his shin bones.

“How clumsy,” Kaz rasps. He hits Ken doll’s leg again. “It’s hard to stand for so long. I must have lost coordination, and you took my chair.”

Jesper’s already out of his own seat. He’s visibly confused, but as always, he’s quick to adapt: he glances at Kaz and Kaz jerks his head towards the exit, and they both head out. Ken doll’s making a massive scene, sobbing and bawling like a baby.

Kaz keeps up the pace until he’s at a secluded park bench, five streets over. Far closer to Dregs territory. In a moderately expensive residential area, too, so police are few and far between and so are pedestrians, on a work night this late. A decent rest spot. He sits down and lightly massages his leg.

Jesper doesn’t sit down next to him. He followed Kaz: of course he followed, but he’s just hopping from one foot to the other, in front of the bench. His trainers are clean. The deep grooves between the toes and instep that his feet wear into every single shoe are still there, of course—and Jesper’s not helping by walking tiptoe as often as he does—and the holes let his black tights peek through, so even if he’s scrubbed the shoes for hours they’re not going to pass for new. For chic.

He still scrubbed them. Jesper’s dirtying them right back up, with his manic pacing, but he scrubbed his favourite shoes into better shape than they’ve ever been since the day he bought them—Kaz had him chase a pickpocket through a construction site that day, he remembers, still testing his commitment, and Jesper didn’t even complain about the mess although that was probably because he didn’t yet dare—Jesper scrubbed his trainers and he’s dressed from the tips of his toes and fingers to high up his neck, he got them a restaurant table, he got there way too early and was so wired he forgot his phone… He’s putting in far more effort than—

“So that date was a disaster. Guess I promised too much.” Jesper’s wriggling his toes almost through the purple scuffed fabric.

“Save your contrition for when you screw up.”

“Sorry, though, Kaz. I didn’t think Carl would just stick around—you’re right, I didn’t think. When I started talking to him. That date was shit.”

“I’m ‘right?’ The date ’was’?” Kaz raises an eyebrow.

But Jesper’s not picking up on Kaz calling out his unfounded assumptions. He’s too busy drumming his gloved fingers against his cheeks, smudging his makeup, hopping, moping.

It’s useless.

“The date’s not over,” Kaz says.

Jesper freezes. It would be funny, how laser-focused he is on Kaz all of a sudden, except for the traces of upset visible in the makeup smeared all over his face, and the fact that apparently, they’ve been working from very different ideas of what tonight means. Clear communication is the only way that no-one ends up disappointed, Jesper always says to Kaz, about Inej. Jesper’s not taking his own advice. Just because he’s a hypocrite doesn’t mean he deserves to suffer, though: they’re a team. If Kaz must spell things out this time, he will. Jesper’s done it for him often enough.

“The date’s not over, Jes. That place was overpriced, anyway. We can just get take-out.”

“We get take-out every day,” Jesper mumbles. He’s staring now, and his grey eyes are bright and wet. Even Kaz can see he’s about to cry. He has no reason, though. “It’s what we always do. I wanted you to enjoy the date.”

Kaz sighs. This is exasperating. If it was anyone but Jesper—if he had any assurance at all that Jesper wouldn’t drown himself in the next best casino’s toilet—he’d walk away. “If I didn’t enjoy your company, I would take the food, go into my room and lock the door.”

“Kaz.”

“I asked you to live with me when I bought the flat.”

“Inej’s out of the city most of the time, so she—”

“I could’ve lived alone. I just don’t want to. When I let you sleep in my squat all these years ago, I realized I didn’t like isolation. I just didn’t trust anybody before…” Kaz stands up. He doesn’t dare—they’re in a secluded spot but still outside, where anyone could see him panic, so he doesn’t just reach out for Jesper’s gloved hand. He pokes it with the head of his cane, instead, until Jesper wraps his fingers around the crow’s beak. “I hope you’re not stupid enough to believe that anything about the course of tonight could possibly change the fact that you are one of the most important people in my life. If tonight’s ruined, we’ll try again. If dating doesn’t work, well try something else.”

“Contingency plans,” Jesper mumbles.

“Exactly—”

“It’s not—”

“You’ve always been terrible at contingency plans. Something always goes wrong, I’ve been trying to tell you. Always. The key is anticipating possible disasters, derailments, and preparing alternate routes to success. We’ll get takeout. There’s one of your regular döner kebap shops on our way back home. I’ll plan out next date, because clearly, you’re not up too it unless you manage to prepare—”

“Contingency plans.” Jesper’s grinning now, and bobbing onto his tiptoes and down again at a dizzying pace. “Of course, boss. I should have known. I should’ve just let you plan everything.”

“I won’t always be there for close supervision, so if you could just adopt the basic principle of…” Kaz trails off. They’re walking now, but not next to each other: Jesper’s skipping, backwards, in front of Kaz. He’s a human shooting star, with his glittering blouse and his paillettes mini skirt. With his thick tights and his turtleneck and his gloves. With his joy, with his care: there’s no other human with whom Kaz would act like this, not in this specific way, and even if there was—there is no-one he’d have wanted to do this evening with but Jesper.

“It wasn’t ruined for me, by the way,” Kaz says.

Jesper scrunches up his messy metallic-gleam face.

“I enjoy plotting the demise of my enemies. I can always use more of them, and Carl from university spent as much time talking down to you as he did falling for my scam. Besides, I got to practice my DAO salesman pitch with you. It wasn’t bad, for me.”

Jesper laughs. “Of course you think that. Of course you do.” He’s hiding his face with his hands for it, and the black gloves just stress the lack of familiar rings on his fingers. Jesper fidgets with these rings without even noticing, and he’s left that tool behind, just so he could…

Once they’re back home. Once they’re in the staircase, even. Kaz will try.

“I enjoy crime. The false revolutionary promises of blockchain technology,” Kaz rasps. “And you.”

Jesper glows. The entire five-minute walk to the döner kebap shop, he glows. He talks about borders and beetles and his childhood farm and the fake birds conspiracy and tricking Haskell into making the Dregs a DAO and then issuing more tokens to water down a single token’s voting power and buying so many that they can cast the deciding vote and just purge the old man—easier than taking candy from a baby—and glitter spray and how to create artificial diamonds, could they just work off the video he watched and get rich, and tomorrow’s breakfast and James Baldwin and succulents for Kaz’ desk and tomorrow, next week, next month. ‘For as long as you want.’ He’s glowing.

He's got a wad of euro bills apparently stuffed into the front waistband of his miniskirt, or his tights, or his underpants, who the fuck knows, but he brazenly pulls at the fabric and fishes out the money in the street in front of the takeaway shop. He knows Kaz’ regular order, but Kaz follows him inside anyway.

The man slicing off döner meat knows Jesper well enough to greet him by name, and the teen girl at the cash register does, too, batting away Jesper’s hand again and again while he tries to stuff two fifties in the tip jar.

“I almost spent more, getting worse food,” Jesper protests.

“Get another piercing!” the girl orders, covering the tip jar with both hands. “You complained you didn’t have money for a septum five days ago! Get a piercing, idiot!”

“You get a piercing! In… some years, when you’re old enough,” Jesper mutters sheepishly in the direction of the man, possibly her father, who’s now at the counter, holding a split flatbread with meat and adding the salads and sauces. The girl looks over too, and Jesper used her distraction to shove in the money.

“Without garlic sauce and onions, this time?” the food shop attendant says. He’s grinning knowingly at Jesper. It’s probably not subtle, Jesper coming in here with company and dressed like a dawn sky.

“With both. Jesper likes them,” Kaz rasps.

“I don’t—”

Very carefully, Kaz rests his hand on Jesper’s elbow. It’s fine. Of course it’s fine. It’s just Jesper, and Jesper makes everything easy, going from perpetual nervous movement to stillness just so he doesn’t bump anything else into Kaz by accident. Jesper, who’s wearing a longsleeve turtleneck that’s not his style, and tights, and gloves.

Jesper, who’s turned his face towards Kaz and the smeared makeup is the sunrise framing his wide, easy smile.

Kaz strokes his thumb slowly back and forth on Jesper’s elbow. “I’ll have mine with garlic sauce too, this time. Extra garlic.”

The shop attendant laughs. “Not the first date, then?”

“The first after we figured it out,” Jesper says. He’s moving his head, still slowly, still carefully, turning his mouth towards Kaz’ forehead with pursed lips and stopping, far enough away that Kaz can’t even feel his breath on his skin. Jesper blows a tiny, happy kiss. “But we’ve been together for years.”

[kindness-ricochets]

I’ve been seeing a lot of thoughts and hc of autistic wylan lately and you seem to also be a fan of the concept. May I ask why? Exactly? I could definitely kinda see it but wanna hear you thoughts you’re always so eloquent

Hey there anon! Sorry for the delay—I’m guessing you already found an answer to this elsewhere while I was off Tumblr for a bit, but just in case, here are my thoughts. This will be heavily personal, but… well, you can’t very well ask an autistic person about autism and expect neutrality!

Autism is different for everyone and can be difficult to pin down, so while Wylan is arguably autistic, he misses several beats that for me would have made him definitively and undeniably autistic. For example, when the bells start to ring, triggering black protocol—I work in a place with a lot of bells and am frequently caught too close to one and normally press my hands over my ears until it’s over because that sound is like shrapnel raking across my insides. All of them. Not just the ear and brain parts. Wylan doesn’t have that sort of visceral reaction, but that may just mean he doesn’t have the same sensitivities that I do, or to the same level. He also never, that I recall, eats meat—as weird as that might sound, eating meat is incredibly complicated with heightened sensitivities to taste and texture. I’m not sure how old I was when I realized it was strange to get up from the table to spit out my food because it viscerally repulsed me. So it might be that Wylan is autistic and has different experiences than I do. Those are things I would include in a story as major indicators of a character being autistic. This might also mean that his father’s way of raising him taught him to hide unusual reactions and stimming behaviors. It’s not that much of a reach to assume a man who tried to abuse the dyslexia out of his son would take the same approach to autism. (More on autism and abuse later.)

So while I’m going to lay out why I read Wylan as autistic, that’s why I think it’s valid to read him as not being autistic as well. Both are valid.

A final caveat, I am well overdue for a reread of the books, so I likely left something out or could have found better examples. Take this as a few of my reasons for a personal headcanon. Anyone who feels differently, that's fine! We can each read things our own way :)

1 - Hyperfixation: The way Wylan loves music

Most of the Crows’ backgrounds color how they see the world: Kaz’s shrewdness, Matthias’s tactical thinking and superstition, Inej’s faith and Suli wisdom, etc. That’s a sign of good character writing. But very little of Wylan’s upbringing seems to have influenced how he sees the world. It comes closest when he thinks about how his father would scorn his new friends, but we never see that scorn from Wylan.

The way a hyperfixation feels, it’s like you’ve always lived in a close parallel world, never fully been a part of the other one where it seems like everyone else lives, but suddenly there’s this bright shining piece of your soul laced through the other world. It lets you connect, it lets you exist in their realm, and you can’t help but filter everything new through that lens because it’s the brightest, most wonderful thing. (I had been between hyperfixations for a while when I started a new job; six months into that work, I read Crooked Kingdom. One of my coworkers thought I had fallen in love, it was that marked a difference.)

So, combining these: Wylan never really acts like he was part of his father’s world, and indeed is in some ways separate from the other Crows, but he parses everything through music, his hyperfixation. He sets words to music to remember them, like he does with the contract. Even his own anxiety is made sense of through music, when in his first narrated chapter, he sets it to music: what am I doing here what am I doing here…. When he’s overwhelmed, his thoughts are “a jangle of misplayed chords”. The Crows have backgrounds that influence how they react to the world, but Wylan’s hyperfixation is his means of experiencing and understanding the world.

2 - Literal thinking: Wylan responds to exact words

In this post, I went into detail on the line where Wylan suggested waking up men to kill them. Wylan is generally unsupportive of killing people—Oomen, Smeet’s clerk, his father… he advocates not-murder in each of these situations. Accepting his aversion to murder, his suggestion to wake men up and kill them seems like a genuine reaction to Jesper saying he doesn’t want to kill unconscious men. Wylan takes things literally.

This happens the most with Jesper, probably because Jesper talks to Wylan the most. Nina and Matthias don’t really register him past how he might be useful, Inej is usually quite direct, and Kaz is very deliberate when he speaks with Wylan. This really interests me because Kaz tends to vary his speech more than the others do, he adapts more to being around other people. He jokes a little with Jesper, spars with Nina, speaks more openly and more sharply with Inej, and he’s precise with Wylan. Kaz may not know what autism is, but he recognizes what’s effective with Wylan.

Another example is when Wylan is sketching the Ice Court plans and Jesper says it looks like a cake. There are plenty of valid responses here: pointing out that concentric circles look like lots of things, that it’s just a sketch, telling Jesper to stop looking over his shoulder. Instead, Wylan says that the Ice Court is sort of like a cake. That… doesn’t sound like something Wylan would normally say. He’s not addressing the whole situation, he’s addressing the specific words Jesper said.

One of the most heartbreaking examples of this (to me, anyway) is with Marya. Wylan does the same thing with his mother, when she asks if he’s there for her money and says she hasn’t got any, and his response is, “I don’t either.” We understand as readers that what Marya is communicating here is that she is so accustomed to being utterly ignored unless she is being used, and if she told Wylan that no one visited but to take advantage and she assumed he was here for the same reason, he would say it wasn’t the case. But he just responds to the immediate statement.

There are a lot of examples of this.

3 — 0% perception, 100% creativity

Wylan can identify things that don’t make sense or that he doesn’t understand, but at the beginning of the series he can’t make leaps, only ask questions. On the Ferolind, he wonders about the source of water at the Ice Court; though Kaz doesn’t say as much, he was clearly wondering, too, because he eventually figured out the underground river. There’s an interesting parallel here where, in the beginning of Crooked Kingdom, Wylan asks a question about how they’ll break into Smeet’s and Kaz tells him to use his eyes instead of running his mouth—at which point Wylan is able to figure it out. I don’t think this is because he never tried before, though, but because no one ever bothered to teach him. Kaz can be harsh but he gives harsh corrections rather than harsh rejections and Wylan learns from him.

It’s hard to understand the world for people with autism. The world is designed and run by and for people whose minds are fundamentally different from ours, whose thoughts and experiences are unlike ours. Imagine trying to learn English or Spanish or Mandarin or any other spoken language if your first language was olfactory. That’s sort of what it’s like for someone with autism to just get dropped into the world and expected to figure this out.

This can be attributed to Wylan’s upbringing, but I disagree with that because none of the others were brought up in the Barrel, either, and Wylan doesn’t understand trade or politics with any special skill. Kaz wasn’t born in the Barrel, but he managed to go from “stealing is wrong” to “wrong isn’t my concern” real quick; Colm Fahey didn’t raise his son on gambling and firefights; the Ghafas never expected their daughter to be away from the family. Only Nina has relevant training—and even that’s precious little, she left school way too early. The others figured it out; Wylan needed a bit more help. He also seems surprised by the way his father conducts business. Wylan takes things on face value—like the time he’s surprised someone would do something, simply because it’s unlawful. This is something he expresses to a group of gangsters. He’s never been taught the way of any world and these things are not intuitive to him.

But Wylan isn’t stupid.

He doesn’t know how to understand the world, but he does understand how things go together. Given a pointy diamond, a handle, and a screw, he cut through Grisha glass. He carries flashbangs and magic napalm, he recreates military hardware—Wylan understands how to make things interact for a specific result. But to me the most telling thing isn’t just that he puts together chemical pieces, it’s that he figured out Jesper controlled bullets. He saw the pieces and put them together.

Wylan can understand when things don’t make sense, but he can’t make sense of them—yet when he understands things at their basic level, he understands them without preconception, for what they are. This is a very autistic way of thinking about things, it goes back to the literalism. He can’t make the leaps of logic other people can, but he also doesn’t make the assumptions they do—“I’ve never heard of a bullet Grisha, so that’s not a thing” vs “Well Jesper’s an almost impossibly good shot and he controls metal and bullets are metal, so why not?”

4 - Broken brain/body connection

Wylan’s great at chemistry and drawing and playing flute or piano—but he’s something of a disaster other times. This is in particular contrast to the other characters, all of whom are physically adept. Meanwhile it’s a challenge for Wylan to climb a rope ladder and he spends a full paragraph trying to figure out what to do with his hands. It’s easy to say, well, he’s used to a sedentary lifestyle, but at this point he’s not. He’s worked in the tannery for months. He’s just physically awkward.

I have less to say on this point only because it’s about something I don’t fully understand myself. I don’t really understand what it would be like to have a body that just… does things? Like normal stuff? Without tics and stims. No idea. Only that Wylan’s discomfort in and seeming lack of mastery of his own body feels very relatable to me.

5 - Abuse

One of the most familiar things about Wylan is how he has been so thoroughly abused and broken down that he’s afraid to do or say much of anything. Again, this is a place his background can be an obscuring factor. Of course Wylan didn’t think to blow up the walls when the first met the parem-juiced jurda and got trapped, he’s a spoiled rich kid! Except, he also startled when Jesper said his name later. Wylan didn’t hesitate because he was spoiled, he hesitated because he had no confidence.

He also thinks Kaz would laugh at him for playing music at his mother’s grave. Now, personally, I can’t see Kaz laughing at Wylan—being indifferent, thinking it’s pointless sentimentality, shaking his head, maybe commenting sharply that they need to go if they don’t have the time. But not laughing. Kaz is a snarky, sharp-edged jerk sometimes, but he doesn’t go out of his way to criticize, he just lets people know when they inconvenience him.

Wylan has been trained to identify attention as negative by an overbearing abusive father who literally saw him as less favorable than a demon. Now, that may have been hyperbole, but Jan criticized everything he could about Wylan—art, music, emotion—and made clear that he was worthless and competent to nothing. (Jan Van Eck can suck a rotten donkey dick but that’s neither here nor there.)

A lot of people with autism experience levels of bullying that have similar impacts. Or as the kids these days are calling it: we go to school. We go to school where we are weird. Where we look weird and move weird and talk about weird things and there’s a whole little bevy of asswipes to makes sure we know it. I got teased more for playing Pokemon and sitting alone reading than the kid who pissed himself onstage at assembly. (This was before Pokemon was cool. I’m old.) And that is not unusual for autistic kids. It’s also not unusual for this to be compounded by relatives or even parents who may be trying to help but don’t understand and can make things even harder.

So we can’t read social cues and we’re taught at a vicious age that everything that comes naturally to us is wrong. Imagine trying to interact in society with that background. There is no guide and most advice from neurotypical people isn’t actually what they mean. It breaks you down.

Wylan’s anxiety isn’t definitive of autism, but isn’t something that was incredibly familiar as someone whose neurodivergent experiences created a strong level of anxiety.

6 — High Compassion, Low Social Competence

Wylan isn’t very good at making friends. In fact, none of the Crows likes him much in the beginning, and only some of them soften toward him by the end. (Matthias and Nina come to respect his skills as a chemist but neither seems to particularly like him.) But you can see throughout the books that Wylan wants to connect with them and be one of them, he just… isn’t. He’s off-beat. He’s weird. He asks questions and mimics behaviors (trying to be cool and tough like Jesper, saying “mission” like Matthias does, imitating Kaz’s scheming face) but he doesn’t quite get how to adapt.

But he still cares about people. Not just them. Everyone. He cares about the people they leave in the ditch outside the prison wagon, he cares about Hanna Smeet, he cares about Alys. He cares about the people who’ll take a hit from Kaz’s sugar caper.

Wylan’s awkward social skills have undeniable big autism energy. I posit his compassion does as well. This is simply who Wylan is, and that means being someone who cares about everyone. I have nothing to back up that this is related to autism. I can say that it’s like me. (Not to brag.) I can’t turn off the part of my brain that says everyone matters. Individuals can opt out of that compassion, but they have it by default. There’s a certain agony in feeling a pull toward and love for just about everyone and yet an inability to develop meaningful connections with them, and that keen loneliness… it just burns.

Again, it’s not definitive of autism, but it’s very similar to an autistic experience.

I said in the beginning that I didn’t think Wylan certainly had autism and I stand by that, but he is a powerfully honest reflection of many people who do. So he can be understood to have autism, and that’s part of the reason some people have that headcanon.

[elriell]

Book Rec’s

Going to try and add a lot of less known books that are amazing and not enough people talk about, this would be too long if I talked about each one in depth, so I am going to leave my fav quotes as that tends to give me a feel for books and whether I will like them and I will link the GR page for more info! Happy reading:)

Fantasy Vibes

From Blood And Ash by Jennifer L Armentrout    (CLICK THIS TOO)

“Death is like an old friend who pays a visit, sometimes when it’s least expected and other times when you’re waiting for her. It’s neither the first nor the last time she’ll pay a visit, but that doesn’t make any death less harsh or unforgiving.”

“Fear and bravery are often one and the same. It either makes you a warrior or a coward. The only difference is the person it resides inside.”

 “You're an absolutely stunning, murderous little creature.”

Storm And Fury by Jennifer L Armentrout

“What are you going to do if it does get worse?” he asked. “Maybe I’ll get myself a seeing-eye gargoyle.”

(HONESTLY BADASS GARGOYLES. SO UNIQUE AND AWESOME)

Demons At Deadnight by A&E Kirk   

“I launched into a graceful ninja-like front roll, then stood my ground to face the monstrous heathen, fearless in my determination to vanquish the deadly foe.

Nah, just kidding. I bolted, discretion being the better part of not getting dead.”

“We are killers,” Matthias said. Bad news. 

“Not girls. We don’t kill girls.” Good news. 

“She’s no girl.” Insulting news? 

“What? Of course she’s a girl.”

 “Want me to check?” 

“Shut up, Blake,” the rest of them chorused.”

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black   

“If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse.”

“If you hurt me, I wouldn't cry. I would hurt you back.”

“I am going to keep on defying you. I am going to shame you with my defiance. You remind me that I am a mere mortal and you are a prince of Faerie. Well, let me remind you that means you have much to lose and I have nothing. You may win in the end, you may ensorcell me and hurt me and humiliate me, but I will make sure you lose everything I can take from you on the way down. I promise you this is the least of what I can do.”

MM Romance

Him by Sabrina Bowen & Elle Kennedy

“Our mouths fit together so perfectly. Every time we kiss, I fall even more in love with him, and it has nothing to do with sex or lust. It's him. His closeness and his scent and the way he soothes me.”

“I…” He clears his throat. “I’d let you do it, though.” My hand freezes in his hair. “You would?” Wes nods. “I’d let you do anything to me, Canning.”

Misfits by Garrett Leigh (Poly romance, its just so perfect ala herongraystairs!)

“Learn something. Read a book. Explore someone. Anger is just a hole where your life could be.”

In The Absence Of Light by Adrienne Wilder

“The light is a funny thing, Grant. We think it shows us what we need to see, but in reality, it blinds us. That’s why I brought you here. I wanted you to see me.”

“Morgan may be autistic, but he is a normal man with a mental condition, not a mental condition who is a man.”

HOneStly JUST READ IT

The Foxhole Court by Nora Sakavic

“It’s not the world that’s cruel. It’s the people in it.”

“I'm not a math problem." "But I'll still solve you."

“Is your learning curve a horizontal line?”

“Who said 'please' that made you hate the word so much?"  Andrew gazed at him in silence for a minute. "I did.”

“I didn't think I was a personal problem. You hate me, remember?" "Every inch of you," Andrew said. "That doesn't mean I wouldn't blow you." 

EVERY QOUTE IS ICONIC TBH 

Vampires, Angels & Greek Mythology

Bloodlines by Michelle Read

“The greatest changes in history have come when people were able to shake off what others told them to do.”

“Takes a lot of tries before you hit perfection." He paused to reconsider that. "Well, except for my parents. They got it on the first try."

“No, thank you," said Adrian. "These hands don't sully themselves with fighting.”

“Everything's about my personal entertainment. The world is my stage. Keep it up- you're becoming a star performer in the show.”

Angels Blood by Nalini Singh

“Some things were worth the dance with danger.”

“You do realize this makes your wings even more unique." "Are you saying you shot me as a cosmetic procedure?”

“You ask a lot of questions for a dead woman.” “What can I say? I prefer to die well-informed.”

“You don't fear me," he said now. She wasn't stupid enough to lie. "I'm petrified. But I figure you didn't make me come all this way just so you could push me off the roof.”

Dark Lover by J.R Ward (warning OTT vamps if thats not your jazz either skip)

“Some bridges you crossed on your own, no matter who drove you to the edge”

“Vengeance was one hell of a roommate.”

Half-Blood by Jennifer L Armentrout

“Two people see each other across a room or their skin brushes. Their souls recognize the person as their own. It doesn’t need time to figure it. The soul always knows… whether it’s right or wrong.”

“It’s just words and words mean nothing. Only action does.”

“People do the damndest things when they’re in love.”

“There is a difference between love and need. Sometimes, what you feel is immediate and without rhyme or reason.”

Assasin-y Goodness

Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers

“When one consorts with assassins, one must expect to dance along the edge of a knife once or twice.”

“I comfort myself with the knowledge that if Duval ever feels smothered by me, it will be because I am holding a pillow over his face.”

“Surely He does not give us hearts so we may spend our lives ignoring them.”

“There is no shame in scars, Ismae.”

Daughter Of The Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller

“I am me because I choose to be me. I am what I want. Some people say you have to find yourself. Not I. I believe we create ourselves to be what we want.”

“Lass, you've the face of an angel but the tongue of a snake.”

“Everyone has something dark in their past. I suppose it's our job to overcome it. And if we can’t overcome it, then all we can do is make the most of it.”

“Waiting. Not waiting. One lover. A hundred lovers. There should be no judgement either way. A woman is not defined by what she does or doesn‘t do in the bedroom.”

“Even a man who’s spent his whole life at sea has reason to fear her when she’s angry. But not I. I sleep soundly. Listening to her music. The sea watches over me. She protects her own.”

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

“No mourners. No funerals. Among them, it passed for 'good luck.”

“It's not natural for women to fight." "It's not natural for someone to be as stupid as he is tall, and yet there you stand.”

“I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all.

“The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true.”

“Kaz leaned back. "What's the easiest way to steal a man's wallet?" "Knife to the throat?" asked Inej. "Gun to the back?" said Jesper. "Poison in his cup?" suggested Nina. "You're all horrible," said Matthias.”

The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson

“It can take years to mold a dream. It takes only a fraction of a second for it to be shattered.”

“Taking another life, she had whispered, even a guilty one, should never be easy. If it were, we'd be little more than animals.”

“Maybe there was no one way to define it. Maybe there were as many shades of love as the blues of the sky,”

“We all have our different skills. You’re patient to a fault, which sometimes doesn’t work to your advantage. I, on the other hand, have the patience of a wet cat. Only on rare occasions does that come in handy.”

“Maybe there were a hundred different ways to fall in love.”

Circus Vibes

Caraval by Stephanie Garber

“Every person has the power to change their fate if they are brave enough to fight for what they desire more than anything.”

“She imagined loving him would feel like falling in love with darkness, frightening and consuming yet utterly beautiful when the stars came out.”

“Some things are worth pursuit regardless of the cost.”

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

“You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.”

“Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.”

Six of Hearts by L.H Cosway

“Note to self: Never try to out-trick a trickster.”

“So why not live with the magic? Be a kid again and believe in the fantastical. Life is more fun with a little smoke and mirrors.”

“We all have thoughts that we would never, ever vocalise. And people who say they don’t are liars.”

“I once read that people who have imaginary friends never reach out to touch them. There’s some part of their brain that subconsciously knows it will break the spell. That’s what it feels like with Jay.”

Amour Amour by Krista & Becca Richie

“We all traverse in and out of people’s worlds, leaving footprints. Some larger, some smaller, but there is always a mark. We can’t sweep it away.”

“Life is a rollercoaster with no volunteers. We’re all forced to take a seat and ride it out.

“I’m average. I’ve been average most of my life, but there are moments where I feel extraordinary. Invincible. Able to conquer any fear and step outside any box. There is no illusion, no fantasy. I can climb a forty-foot pole. I can fly eighty-feet in the air. I can be taller than tall. It’s a dream that I’m living. Every day. With him.”

More M/M Romance

The Song Of Achilles by Madeline Miller

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”

“He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.”

“He is half of my soul, as the poets say.”

Axel’s Pup by Kim Dare  (Shifter Romance & BDSM FYI if thats not your jazz)

"I want to screw you, and tie you up, and make you writhe from-you know all that. But I want so much more. I want the whole thing, not just a quick scene. I want twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I want you to be mine. I won't take anything less."

Aristotle And Dante Discover The Secrets Of The Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“In your dream. You were looking for me.""I'm always looking for you," 

“He was funny and focused and fierce. I mean the guy could be fierce. And there wasn’t anything mean about him. I didn’t understand how you could live in a mean world and not have any of that meanness rub off on you.”

“He looked like an angel. And all I wanted to do was put my fist through his jaw. I couldn't stand my own cruelty.”

“One of the secrets of the universe was that our instincts were sometimes stronger than our minds. Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere.”

Shattered Glass by Dani Alexander

"Tell me something good about your life," I whispered, needing to hear that he wasn't as broken as I thought him to be.[...]"You." It was so quiet I almost didn't hear it.”

“Is he my competition?” I asked. “Everyone is your competition.” Peter lifted his hand to his eyes and began lowering it incrementally. “It goes normal human beings, crazies, republicans, my hand, imaginary characters, corpses and then, in a moment of lustful psychosis, you.” By the time he was done, his hand was below the table.

Romance 

Kiss The Sky by Krista & Becca Richie

“You’re not a pit stop. You’re my finish line. There’s no one after you.”

“People hope to touch the sky. I dream of kissing it.”

“I love the way he’s staring at me. It makes me feel more than just beautiful. I feel like I’m his. Like no one else could possibly compare to me. He doesn’t even have to say the words. I see it in his eyes. I can practically read it in his mind.”

“I’ve wanted so many things in life,” he says softly, “but you’re the one that has meant the most to me.”

Translation: I love you.”

Wallbanger by Alice Clayton

“You know those moments when everything is exactly the way it was meant to be? When you find yourself and your entire universe aligning in perfect synchronization, and you know you couldn’t possibly be more content? I was inside that very moment, and fully conscious of it.”

“The right woman for you wouldn't want you to change anything about your life. She wouldn't rock your boat, she'd jump right in and sail it with you.”

“It breaks my heart the way young girls pick themselves over, never thinking they're good enough. You make sure you always remember, you're exactly the way you're supposed to be. Exactly. And anyone who says otherwise, well, poppycock.”

Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover

“Ugly love becomes you. Consumes you. Makes you hate it all. Makes you realize that all the beautiful parts aren't even worth it. Without the beautiful, you'll never risk feeling the ugly. So you give it all up. You give it all up. You never want love again, no matter what kind it is, because no type of love will ever be worth living through the ugly love again.”

“Some people they grow wiser as they grow older. Unfortunately, most people just grow older.”

“Sometimes the spirit of a man isn't strong enough to survive the ghosts of his past”

“My grandfather used to say the placement of a birthmark was the story of how a person lost the battle in their past life. I guess you got stabbed in the neck. Bet it was a quick death, though.”

On Dublin Street by Samantha Young

“Gentlemen are gentlemen in bed. They make sure you're having a good time." "I'll make sure you're having a good time, and that you're okay with everything. I just won't be well mannered about it.”

“In truth it’s difficult to describe a broken heart.”

“Sometimes words aren’t needed for you to know a change has come upon you.”

Romance Series

Paper Princess by Erin Watt

“My skill, if I have one, isn’t dancing. It’s my ability to believe that tomorrow can be a better day.”

“My life is mine. I live it. I control it.”

“but a clean knife still makes a painful wound.”

“Fate is for the weak--those people who don't have enough power or will to shape life into what they need it to be.”

Foreplay by Sophie Jordan

“I’m not going to lie to you and convince you that I’m someone good and shiny like your guy that’s going to be a doctor.”

“You can’t even see it. I’m the safest thing you’ll ever find”

“That's what I wanted. Something to enrich me, to make me feel better about the things in my life that I could never change."

Wait for You by J.Lynn.  (AKA Jennifer L Armentrout) 

“You are really…” “Amazing? Awesome?” He paused, brows raised. “Astonishing?” “I was going to go with bizarre.” “Well, hell, if I had feelings that might actually hurt.”

“As long as the sun’s shining, shit can’t be that bad.”

The Deal by Elle Kennedy

“Sometimes people sneak up on you and suddenly you don’t know how you ever lived without them.”

“I want to murder him in his sleep, A. No, I want to murder him when he’s awake so he can see the joy on my face when I do it.”

“And the most important lesson I learned is that I’m not a victim—I’m a survivor.”

Romance w/ Epic Plots

The Unbecoming Of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

“This was the boy I loved. A little bit messy. A little bit ruined. A beautiful disaster. Just like me.”

“You could start a fire with the heat between you two.""You're mistaking bitter animosity for heartfelt affection.”

“You're supposed to say, 'All I want is your happiness. I'll do whatever it takes, even if it means being without you.'""Sorry," Noah said. "I'm just not that big of a person.”

“I’ll walk forever with stories inside me that the people I love the most can never hear.”

“We are far too screwed up for a goddamned love triangle.”

“You will love him to ruins.”

The Winners Curse by Marie Rutkoski

“He knew the law of such things: people in brightly lit places cannot see into the dark.”

“Isn’t that what stories do, make real things fake, and fake things real?”

“The Winner’s Curse is when you come out on top of the bid, but only by paying a steep price.”

“The god of lies must love you, you see things so clearly.”

Obsidian by Jennifer L Armentrout (are you getting the idea I love everything she writes? because I do!)

“I've always found that the most beautiful people, truly beautiful inside and out, are the ones who are quietly unaware of their effect."

“More books." His eyes went wide. "You have, like, them books you just said you haven't read." "Doesn't mean I won't get more books."

Angelfall by Susan Ee

“I never thought about it before, but I'm proud to be human. We're ever so flawed. We're frail, confused, violent, and we struggle with so many issues. But all in all, I'm proud to be a Daughter of Man.”

“Sometimes, as we're stumbling along in the dark, we hit something good.”

“I knew from the start that your loyalty would get you killed. I just never thought it would be your loyalty to me that would do it.”

Unique Reads

Dont Look Back by Jennifer L Armentrout

“I was stuck in a life I didn't remember, squeezed into the shell of this girl - this Samantha Joe Franco - and the more I learned about her, the more I was starting to hate her.”

“Things aren’t perfect. They are far, far from it,but they are getting there, and I wasn’t looking back. Not when there were so many good things in the future.”

Verity by Colleen Hoover

“I wasn’t heroic. I wasn’t simple. I was difficult. An emotionally challenging puzzle he wasn’t up for solving.”

“A writer should never have the audacity to write about themselves unless they’re willing to separate every layer of protection between the author’s soul and their book. The words should come directly from the center of the gut, tearing through flesh and bone as they break free. Ugly and honest and bloody and a little bit terrifying, but completely exposed.”

“No one is likable from the inside out.”

“Find what you love and let it kill you.”

Painted Faces by L.H Cosway

“We all paint on a face to show the world," Nicholas replies philosophically. "For some of us, that's quite literal.”

“I love him because he makes me laugh when I don't feel like laughing. I love him because he challenges my view of what a man is. I love him because I know I shouldn't love him and that he'll break my heart. I love him because he's a complete and total anomaly. I love him because I want to kill the sadness inside him more than I want anything else in the world.”

“You saw me, changed my life, made it better, and I’m completely fucking in love with you.”

Sorcery of Thorns by Margret Rogerson

“It was always wise to be polite to books, whether or not they could hear you.”

“Knowledge always has the potential to be dangerous. It is a more powerful weapon than any sword or spell.”

“When terrible things have happened to you, sometimes the promise of something good can be just as frightening.”

“You belonged in the library, as much as any book.”

“You unmanageable, contrary creature. You have made me believe in something at last. It feels as wretched as I imagined.”

Obviously not every book is going to suit everyone, everyone has pet peeves, and things that they won’t enjoy but hopefully this gives you some variety and I personally loved them all at some point! Pls feel free to come to my ask/chats to discuss any of them  that would make me so happy <3 this took 4 hours damn

[bookishbunnies]

Oh gosh, okay, I honestly didn't realise anyone would actually read my posts but I will take any excuse to keep talking about Jack Wolfe, Wylan, and Jesper 😅 here's the scenes from episode 3

First off, just his adorable serious look he has on most of the time, which fits so perfectly coz he's trying to look like he belongs there, but he has no fucking clue what's going on. He's been thrown into this chaotic mess of people, so very different to the situations he grew up with, and you can see him constantly looking between everyone's faces, concentrating, trying to figure them all out, trying to figure out the social cues and rules

(Honestly it feels so fucking familiar, it's such an incredible representation of an autistic person, and its all done so subtly, even when he's not the focus of the camera you can see him concentrating on everyone else's faces, what they're doing, trying to work it all out and understand)

And when he's explaining stuff, that isn't exactly relevant, but he has the knowledge and he wants to share it, he's always looking to Jesper, to see if he's listening, to see if he's even interested in what he's saying, coz he loves sharing his knowledge and he wants to share it with Jesper

The slow turn of his head, open mouth, tiny huffed laugh at the end, you can see the slow realisation that Jesper is definitely intending on going inside the house (where they find Rollins kid) when jesper asks so curiously 'what are those guards guarding'. It's like you can see his thought process of 'hang on a sec, no, you don't mean' and 'of course he means he's going inside, and of course I'm going with him'

And his little head nod/shake/movement when Jesper says 'break ins the best part'. He's like of fucking course it is. This is exactly why he didn't remember me, this man has never thought a single thing through in his life

Also, I've mentioned it before, but just the constant always looking to jesper for guidance/reassurance on what they're doing/where they're going

And how his face immediately lights up as soon as he sees the piano. Like he'd been glancing st jesper but as soon as he saw that piano that was his whole focus, he was in awe

And the sound in his voice when he said 'well you didn't remember me', like he'd accepted that fact, he was resigned to it, so of course he didn't mention it

Also, this one's not subtle, but oh gods I love the look of sheer terror on his face when the kid walks in 😂

And yet again, he looks to Jesper to find out what they're doing, how he should act during this encounter. But he sees Jesper moving slightly and immediately looks down to his gun, glances at jesper a few more times and realises that Jesper has no idea how to get out of this peacefully, he's already reaching for his gun, which is when he makes the very quick decision to step in and lie their way out. Which he's probably had to do quite a lot recently, lie about where he's from.

And even while he's taking control and talking he's still glancing towards Jesper, to gain the reassurance that he's doing the correct thing

And its a bit weird for the scene coz he doesn't know Jespers a durast yet, but he seems to have complete faith in Jesper being able to find a solution to their problem of not having a piano wire. He informs him so matter of factly that they do not have a wire. But when Jesper gives him a lil nod he accepts it, walks away a little bit, and smiles, coz he trusts Jesper. He doesn't look worried, but he does somehow manage to glance at jesper several more times in the space of a couple of seconds while walking away from him 😂

Tho when Jesper does manage to fix it so quickly he's definitely confused, although I think right after this is when he figured out Jespers a durast for sure

And my God, when the kid plays so horribly 😂 the woman starts wincing immediately, Jesper makes a dace immediately, but you can see him try to keep a straight face for longer, he knows what it's like for a kid to suck at something, and he knows they need encouragement. As it goes on tho he looks shocked that it's that bad, looks towards to woman for confirmation that the kid is fucking terrible, and then allows himself to wince, coz yeah, it heckin hurts his ears. I also find it very interesting that he's the kind of person to close his eyes during that, whereas Jesper is making faces but keeping his eyes open the whole time. It shows the difference between them, jesper knows to always keep an eye on your surroundings, but Wylan just doesn't have that experience yet, that paranoia yet

And omg he looks so sweet when he sits down to play. He's excited to share his skills, and he's excited to play the piano that made his face light up the second he saw it

He gets so much softer and more confident as he's playing too. You can see him switch back as soon as he finishes, going from smooth and confident back to kinda awkward and unsure, and yet again, immediately looks to Jesper for reassurance and to see his reaction

The way he relaxes when Jesper agrees with him about not telling Kaz, I think for two reasons, getting confirmation that he was saying the right thing, this this doesn't make him stand out as obviously not from the barrel, and also just from relief, coz he really does mean what he's saying, he doesn't want kaz to hurt the kid

This little awkward lean in he does to Jesper when he asks him he's worried about him will live rent free in my head for the rest of my life. It's the cutest little bobble, just in but then immediately back out like he's unsure of how close he can get

The little look of disbelief that crosses his face when jesper is talking about it not being his fight, and that he didn't know what he was getting into. He's like yeah I didn't but I knew I'd get to see you more so fucking obviously I'm gonna hang around

And Jespers words affect him, coz he knows they're correct. But he pushes past that quickly, straightens up and acts more confident (honestly probably coz he doesn't want jesper to realise he's literally agreed to all this just coz he wants to spend more time with Jesper)

And like yes Jesper, he absolutely is walking away for dramatic effect, which is awesome, and def accurate to the sassy book Wylan we know, and yet he still can't do it fully, he still glances back towards Jesper

The shock on his face upon walking in and seeing kaz in the state he's in. The others wouldn't question it, it's not that out of place, but wylans still new so he's shocked. He didn't grow up around people who got injured so much all the time.

The way he's trying to be confident in front of Kaz but immediately averts his eyes as soon as Kaz mentions the boy

And he's looking so expectantly at Jesper while Kaz asks for the kids name. At first you can tell he's expecting Jesper to keep to their deal, to not tell Kaz, but as jesper hesitates you can see him get more worried. And when jesper does say the name he tries to keep his face straight but it breaks slightly, you can tell he was surprised that jesper told kaz, that he felt betrayed, hurt.

The way he kinda stutters over telling Kaz that alby can't help who his father is. Which only makes sense if you've read the books and know what Wylans family is like. The way his voice changes and hesitates as he says 'father',nwe know he's thinking of his own, that he's not just talking about alby, but also himself

Okay, just realised I've been up for almost 24 hours now coz I got up early to watch s1 right before s2 😅 gonna sleep before I continue, which is probably a good thing coz I know full well I can talk about a certain episode 4 scene for fucking ever 😅

Now that I've finished I'm going back and rewatching most of the wesper scenes, taking more time. And my gods I'm so glad I am. Wylans facial expressions at everything is fucking top tier.

The way he looks at Jesper everytime he's trying to figure out where/how they've met before

The little shake of his head, the face of absolute 'oh ffs' when Jesper asks if they'd met before when talking on the carriage about how Kaz found Wylan at the tannery

The absolute terror on his face when Alby walks into the room. Wylan, it is simply a kid, you don't have to be terrified 😅

The wincing at the kid playing the piano 😂 yet trying to be so supportive 😂

The way he looks up at Jesper after playing the piano

The little lean in and back when he asks Jesper if he's worried about him 😍

The way he's looking at Jesper so concerned, trying to figure out if he's gonna give Kaz the kids name. And the subtle look of betrayal and Jesper does

The look and the little silent 'what??' when Jesper refers to him as a total stranger

The little look and emphatic nod when Jesper finally realises they have met before while laying on top of him under the carriage

The look of 'are you fucking kidding me' when jesper mentions the stroopwaffles

Look I could go on, but that's gonna be way too fucking long a post 😅

[kindness-ricochets]

your little wylan metas are quite intriguing and honestly reading wylan as nd in some way makes quite a lot of sense.

Being nd and already having high empathy but bad socialization due to being isolated his whole life explains a lot of how he acts. It’s cause he genuinely doesn't get how to act. It also explains his imitations of the people around him.

I personally believe everyone imitates the people around them, especially those your close to. Like your parents and friends.

Wylan never had anyone to do that with and now he’s surrounded with multiple ,very ill role, models to do that with, he has been provided with multiple personalities to attempt to mask with. It may be going awkwardly for the first bit but man is he trying!

i’ d love to see more lil metas from you about the crows!

Thank you! While I agree that we all imitate the people around us, I think the things that stick, the ones that become a part of us after those people are out of our lives, are the ones we had inside and only realized from seeing it in others. And here's the thing about Wylan... he seems to genuinely like all the others, even when they don't like him, and that's what makes Wylan who he is.

Wylan doesn't have Matthias's convictions, but he has something of Matthias's honesty. (This one in particular interests me because Matthias seems to never really soften towards Wylan and probably has the harshest opinion of him in the first book, whereas Wylan is initially drawn to Matthias, best example being when he uses the term "job" because Matthias does.)

He doesn't have Inej's calm, sure manner, but he has something of her compassion. Maybe he doesn't know how to show it and is still learning to understand where other people come from, but his first narrated chapter is just bursting with concern--that Nina might catch cold in her scant costume, that Jesper really shouldn't be at the tables, that Inej... well. He's immature, yes, but undeniable caring.

I think the one that's most interesting, though, is that Wylan doesn't have Kaz's ability to extrapolate information but he does have Kaz's ability to create something new with the information he has. Wylan doesn't get how the world works. Kaz will see an inconsistency and his mind works through all the possibilities to solve it; Wylan will see an inconsistency and ask why. But they can both work their way out. Kaz does this manipulating people. Wylan does it with chemistry. This is something else that contributes to my feeling that Wylan may be autistic; his logic isn't the logic of others, so he can't guess what they did or will do or why, but given the pieces he can always make something new.

[kindness-ricochets]

SOC Angels & Demons AU (sort of)

This is in the same AU as my fic A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Republican National Convention, and might not make sense without that background. I had an... interesting time with this prompt. But once I got the idea, I kind of had to!

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Inej hadn't been sure about the party. She hadn't been sure about much of anything since accepting the internship. For the first time, she lived away from her family, and the independence she had longed for left her lonely. She was the youngest person by about a decade at the lab and her brown skin made her stand out in the town.

So when David Kostyk invited her to a party, she had been conflicted. He was an awkward man and largely kept to himself. Though he had never given her reason to doubt him, still the offer set off alarm bells in her head.

At least until David added, "My son's about your age. His friends are having an 'angels and demons' party and if you're interested I'll ask him what that means."

It turned out that it was a costume party.

Not wanting to stand out too much, Inej hadn't gone overboard on her costume. She wore a flowy white blouse over her jeans. That was angelic... ish.

David's wife, Genya, had been welcoming, dispelling the last of Inej's concerns, and their son, Wylan, was polite even if he did turn the conversation immediately to chemistry. Well, you could take the girl out of the lab...

"Are you sure you don't want a halo?" Genya asked. "I can braid your hair for you."

"It's easier to just agree," offered Wylan.

Inej smiled and held up her hands in mock surrender. "If you're sure you don't mind."

Genya's hands were surprisingly gentle as she brushed Inej's hair and began weaving it into a tight braid. It was just the two of them in the kitchen now, and Inej remembered her mother's hands in her hair... of course she could braid her own hair, too, but there was something soothing in that touch.

"There," she announced. "Go have a look in the mirror, let's see if you like it."

As Inej dipped into the bathroom to examine her braid, she heard Genya knocking on what she assumed must be Wylan's door.

Inej loved her braid. Woven around the crown of her head, it glowed with golden ribbons. She still wasn't some treetop cherub, but if she said so herself, she looked angelic.

Wylan, meanwhile, was fretting. The idea had been solid. The problem was that when he formed it, he was thinking of himself as a painting—and painting up a human face was nothing like painting canvas. Now as he stared into the mirror, he wondered if he’d made a mistake. He was already worried about how David and Genya would react, but he had assumed he was taking that risk for something good. Something cool.

He shook his head. It was the best he could do. Besides, with Genya knocking at his door, did he have a lot of choices? So Wylan swallowed and went to face the music.

Genya looked him over and grinned. “You look so cute!”

He had wanted to look sexy, but couldn’t bring himself to wear super-tight jeans where Genya might see, so he would settle for cute. He still thought there was something wicked in the flare of his jacket, and he had drawn a small snake at his temple. There was a red-white-and-blue elephant sticker on his chest. The heart of the piece was the horns, though. Curled and pointed, they took his costume from ‘edgy’ to ‘demonic’. His hair had grown out enough to cover the headband, so it almost looked like the horns grew right out of his head!

“But,” she continued, “the makeup… if you wanted eye makeup, you should’ve asked. Come on. Let’s see what we can do about this.”

He had been prepared for her to be angry, but was outright baffled that rather than raising her voice, she took him into the bathroom, took out her own makeup bag, and got to work.

“I don’t usually wear anything this heavy,” Genya said as Wylan kept his eyes carefully closed. The last thing he wanted was to get gel liner in his eye. (Also, who knew? Gel liner was a thing!) “But… with a little foundation… there! Have a look.”

Wylan did—and it was a million times better. Whatever he thought he was doing with a tube of mascara, he wasn’t. But Genya had done it with her brushes and gels.

“I love it!”

“Thought you might.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

He still wasn’t entirely comfortable calling her that. He liked it, but they needed time. Sometimes he couldn’t help remembering that his bio mom was out there somewhere… that maybe she wouldn’t like him this way. Maybe having a deviant for a son…

“Wylan? What’s on your mind, kid?”

He shook his head. “Just grateful for you.”

She squeezed his shoulders in a half-hug, and he would have given up the entire party to stay here next to her.

“Hey!”

The shout from the entrance meant one thing: Jesper was here.

“Well, go take his breath away,” Genya said.

The first thing Wylan noticed were the wings. Jesper had made himself a pair of wings out of sturdy paper, and had stripes of pink, yellow, and blue growing from his shoulders. Other than that, he wore his usual threadbare jeans and a generously tight t-shirt (Wylan did not in any way object), but most noteworthy was the sword at his hip.

Wylan grinned. “Guardian angel?”

“All yours, gorgeous.”

Wylan, under his demon horns and dramatic eye makeup, blushed.

“Jesper, are you warm enough?” Genya asked.

“Not entirely,” Jesper acknowledged, “but we’ll be inside all night.”

“Oh—this is Inej,” Wylan said as she stepped in from the kitchen. “She works with David. Inej, this is Jesper, my boyfriend.”

Jesper raised an eyebrow, because he was very clear on what Wylan was doing. Hey new person, I’m gay. Good for him. Even if Jesper was standing here with giant pansexual flag wings.

“Hi, Inej,” he said. “Are you coming to the party with us?”

“Remember,” Genya said, “home by midnight.”

Wylan nodded.

“Jesper?”

“He’ll be home by midnight. I promise.”

It had taken weeks of negotiation for Genya to agree to let Jesper take Wylan to the party. She had no objection to Wylan going to the party, nor to Jesper and Wylan being together at the party, but she preferred if she or David took Wylan there and picked him up. That way they could guarantee he was home on time. There wasn’t even a good reason for it to feel so important, but it did: Wylan wanted to go to the party with Jesper.

The three of them piled into Jesper’s truck, Wylan squished between Jesper and Inej.

“Why do you have such a strict curfew?” Inej wondered.

“I’m a foster kid. I’m not supposed to be out overnight, and we’re looked at especially closely because—well, we just are.”

Inej nodded.

Jesper knew more of the reason, but if Wylan didn’t want Inej to know he was one of those Van Ecks, Jesper wouldn’t be the one to tell. There were other reasons Inej might assume—maybe they were looked at closely because David and Genya were Jewish or because he was autistic, or any number of ridiculous reasons.

“How long have you lived with Genya and David?”

“Since June. They’re really great people.”

“Not as great as I am,” added Jesper.

“Well,” Wylan reasoned, “no one’s as great as you are.” Then, because they were at a stop sign, he stretched up to kiss Jesper’s cheek, bumping his horns on the top of the car.

When they reached Zoya’s, they were welcomed by Nina Zenik in a costume. Jesper realized for the first time that it was entirely possible Nina hadn’t so much wanted a party as an excuse to wear that. Her little white dress showed off her best assets, while the black boots with a dozen buckles each and light-up devil’s-horn headband made sure no one mistook her for an actual angel or anything. Even if she did have a pair of tiny white wings.

“You’re here!” she cried. “Finally! Let’s play Scattergories.”

So they did just that. Even Kaz joined in, though his costume wasn’t more than his usual dark clothing and an especially somber expression.