Detail I Havent Noticed Anyone Talking About

Detail I haven’t noticed anyone talking about

You know something I noticed about six of crows that I don’t see anyone talking about so maybe I’m just overthinking it?

Jan Van Eck is always on about how Wylan is stupid and useless because he can’t read, right? 

But Wylan goes on the Ice Court Heist, considered suicidal and impossible, and he may not be a POV character in SOC or as flashy as Jesper, but he does play an important role. He gives them information on the layout of the Ice Court. He draws maps. He gives us the iconic “just girls?” moment. He saves Jesper’s life by pretending to be drunk. He helps them at the harbor when they’re ambushed before leaving, setting off a flash bomb. He helps get the tank. He voluntarily disguised himself as Kuwei to trick his father--also to, you know, see if his dad would actually kill him, but it was hard to do, knowing he might never get his real face back again.

Nobody notices that Wylan can’t read or write for the ENTIRE novel. There’s a moment where he doesn’t have his map labeled, but I only caught it on a reread, and his explanation that he doesn’t know Fjerdan is honestly convincing. Nobody thinks about how he has trouble reading signs or thinks too hard on why he doesn’t have his map labeled. Wylan gets through a whole ass novel without anyone noticing his inability to read. The book doesn’t have to go into long arguments about how not being able to read or write, or being otherwise unable to do things that others can or exactly the way they can, doesn’t make you stupid or helpless. Because Kaz shows us long before we get deep into his own thoughts regarding his disability. And Wylan showed us way before we even knew he had one.

Anyways, Six of Crows is a gift to humanity, bless Leigh Bardugo :)

On Inej and Tolya’s boat scene

Me personally, I don’t see it actually happening. It’s a fun bit of speculation as to Inej having a poet bf (best kinds of bfs), and I love them both. I also love the possibilities for jealous Kaz.

I keep seeing memes that show someone talk about the air nomads and aang’s loss and then katara being like “that’s nothing! My mom died!”

Which is weird because...that never actually happened?

In “The Southern Air Temple,” Katara brings up her mom more to provide an example of how ruthless the fire nation is and let Aang know she understands loss. Yeah, she says she understands what it’s like to lose people you care about at the end of the episode because SHE DOES. She never says, “I’ve lost as much as you!” she says she’s lost people she cares about, WHICH IS TRUE. Her mom’s dead and she probably doesn’t even know if her dad’s alive. Either way, he’s not around. She’s trying to empathize with him, not completely overlook his grief. And, you know, so he won’t destroy the temple in said grief.

In “the southern raiders,” I always interpreted Katara’s “I knew you wouldn’t understand” as being because...Aang doesn’t understand. He was raised on pacifist, all-life-is-sacred ideals his entire life. He didn’t spend his whole life in a war, among people who’d also spent their whole lives in war. He can’t directly fist fight Sozin, and if he could, he probably would, let’s bffr; but everyone directly responsible for the Air Nomad genocide is dead. Yes, what she says to Sokka is out of pocket, but she and aang have such different experiences and views that it’s true that he doesn’t understand and isn’t asking in an attempt to.

Whatever. Stop demonizing a fourteen-year-old for having PTSD.

You know what we should normalize in YA fiction?

Love triangles that ACTUALLY CONTRIBUTE SOMETHING TO THE STORY.

Like, the hunger games gets ragged on a lot for its unnecessary love triangle, but the boys represent katniss choosing a life of war and anger or a life of peace and hope. Gale=war, Peeta=peace. The boys are their own characters, and the love triangle does get annoying at times, but it still adds to the themes of the trilogy.

I found my Keeper of the Lost Cities books, which is what got me thinking about this in the first place, and wouldn’t it have been cool if shannon messenger went that route with fitz and keefe? Like, Fitz represents Sophie’s old life, the pressures other people put on her (and that she puts on herself), etc., with Keefe representing a new life for her and freedom to discover who she is outside of being a prodigy/moonlark, etc. I just wasn’t getting that vibe reading the books. (And I’m a big supporter of forgetting that Dex ever had a crush on Sophie. Platonic Sodex for life).

Also, Sodex is a stupid ship name, I’m sorry.

Idk I usually put down a book as soon as it shows signs of love triangles, so I don’t know many others, but yeah. Screw meaningless love triangles that only exist to add “tension” to a story that can’t stand on its own, thank you. :)

ah, nostalgia

So, when I was in elementary school, my sister had this book series called Spirit Animals by various authors, and I picked up the first book and read it and was obsessed for a year or two, then put them down and never thought about them again.

But it’s always nice to revisit your old books, so if you’re in the, like, 5-person spirit animals fandom, welcome! If you’re not, you should be. It’s fun. We get a new piece of fanart every few years. You’ll also be hopelessly confused by this post without having read the books.

Now, in blood ties we meet what I think is one of the most underrated and underutilized characters of the series: Lishay.

What do we really know about Lishay?

It’s basically canon at this point that she and Tarik were in love. Her brother’s dead soon before she meets our main characters. Her spirit animal dies at the end of the book, widely considered the worst thing that could ever happen to you. She’s a native of Southern Zhong (in the book of Shane). Oh, and she and her brother were twins. She’s around Tarik’s age, so middle-aged, probably in her forties or at most, late thirties. Tarik describes her as “one of [the Greencloaks’] finest.”

And you can do so much with just that information!

I would actually go so far as to have her and Tarik be married. This is how you can tell I typed this at midnight and that I have too much time on my hands, but seriously, it makes them more than two greencloaks who maybe have a thing for each other trying to keep four kids alive in the middle of a war; they have lives that they left behind! It makes Tarik’s eventual death and Lishay’s entire existence in the series even more tragic. And think of the old married couple jokes there could’ve been!

She and her brother were twins, and I feel like he maybe deserved more than a single sentence in passing. Maybe her brother and Tarik were also friends, and now they have to both cope with their grief. Maybe Lishay’s used to always having her brother guard her back, so Tarik notices that she fights less effectively without him--two halves of a whole, as the whole ying-and-yang thing goes. And with her spirit animal dying, we open up room for Meilin to have flashbacks in Fire and Ice about Lishay helping her through the grief of losing her own father right in front of her. Part of what makes Lishay’s character so interesting to me is that she’s probably the character we see go through the most and worst losses in the least amount of time. Her homeland is being attacked, she’s under constant physical and emotional stress, and she loses her twin brother and spirit animal in what, two weeks, AT MOST? And then she still has to fight a war?

Lishay is a native of southern zhong and seems familiar with the jungles of that region, so why not have her explicitly be a native OF THE JUNGLES? Make up a tribe for her to belong to. That makes the fight in the jungles more personal, because this is her home. Show her skills at hunting, climbing trees, swimming in the rivers, and archery, etc., skills that you could only pick up in the jungle. Give us a perspective of Zhong that goes beyond Meilin’s rich girl, general’s daughter life; give us women of the jungle who are trained to hunt and fight alongside their brothers, people who live in treehouses or wooden huts. And Lishay is supposed to be one of the greencloak’s finest warriors! Give us a taste of her swordfighting or archery skills that makes her so remarkable. Give her a more crucial role in the final battle; show her being close to other powerful greencloaks, like Olvan and Lenori. 

And in the book of shane, make it undeniably obvious that the only reason he got away was because of the talismans, not because she couldn’t shoot him out of a tree. 

In short, give her the fucking credit.

Anyways. End rant.

In honor of the renaissance of my Grishaverse obsession...

1: MARCH 16th CAN’T GET HERE FAST ENOUGH! 

2: How terrified do you think Ketterdam would be of the Crows if they were all still there? (Yes, Matthias is still alive, did y’all really fall for that joke LB pulled? Lmao). Kaz Brekker, obviously, who can pick any lock and has a bone-breaking cane and very...memorable...one-liners and who is extremely violent and holds a grudge for like 10 years. Inej Ghafa (our queen) who climbs shit and you can literally NEVER see/hear her unless she wants you to. Jesper Fahey likes to shoot stuff and he’s also really good at it. Wylan is now VERY rich (I need a donation of a couple million dollars, Wylan, please--) and VERY good at blowing stuff up. Nina can raise the fucking dead and is also hotter than you. And Matthias is A) probably good at fighting cause druskelle training and B) has a girlfriend who’s hotter than you and can raise the dead.

Idk I don’t think I could tough it out in Ketterdam...my anxiety could never.